Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

INDUSTRY

11.4 a.m.

Mr. Michael Neubert: I beg to move.
That this House urges the Government to give early evidence of its determination to encourage greater productivity and profitability in industry in the interests of increased investment and expanded opportunities of employment.
Just as every idea has its time, so every motion has its moment. Who could deny that at the end of a week which has seen five strikes paralyse British Leyland—a company to which £1,400 million of public money is committed and on which so many workers and their families as well as their fellow-countrymen depend—this is an apt subject for discussion today?
At times like this it appears that car workers have been overcome by a collective death wish, urged on by their lemming-like leaders to be the first over the edge of the cliff. We are told that last year British Leyland lost the equivalent of 5,000 man-years through strikes. That is the equivalent of 5,000 men at British Leyland being unemployed for a full 12 months or, in terms of production, 137,000 lost cars. When we consider that one of British Leyland's problems is not just its productivity, its ability to produce cars given the workers, but the fact that it does not have enough cars to sell in a market crying out for its models, the tragedy is all too clear.
The tragedy is brought home by interviews such as that which took place in a television news bulletin, at the beginning of this week, with an Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers' convener. I do not quote his exact words but I am sure that I do him justice when I say that he said "I couldn't care a tinker's cuss about the company's problems. My job is to secure better wages and conditions for my members." If that is the quality of

leadership at shop-floor level, if that is the length of sight the workers' leaders have, and if that shows their intellectual grasp of the problem facing us, perhaps our sympathies ought to go out to the car workers.
It is clear that the situation facing British industry is serious. Industry may be afflicted not just with a malaise but with a fatal malady. This subject does not rest entirely with the car industry; it rests with industry in total. The importance of industry to this nation's well-being should not be underestimated. It accounts for about four-fifths of our visible exports and three-fifths of our total exports. The fortunes of British industry are very much the fortunes of each individual citizen. That is the justification, if any were needed, for bringing this issue before the House once again.
I have claimed that every motion has its moment and that this is the moment for this motion. It could, however, have been brought forward at any time in the past 10 years, such has been the prevailing pattern in the industry over that time. It is a great economic loss to the country that this situation should continue. My starting point is the level of production generally, which in recent months has been running at about or below the level of the three-day working week of two years ago.
It is an interesting, if not fascinating, fact that during the first quarter of 1974 production reached a level of 96½ per cent. compared with the same period in 1973. Behind that simple statement lie a host of inferences and implications, which could be examined in detail. For example, there is no doubt that stocks were reduced during that period and that extra hours were worked during the three days available. There is no escaping the principal conclusion, the fundamental fact, that this showed how abysmally poor our productivity level is. In crude terms it means that in half a week—and for many people three days is half a week—we managed to achieve nearly as much as we normally achieve in a full week.
In practical terms, people are taking home a week's wages for half a week's work. This is not only a serious economic factor; it is serious in personal terms for the people engaged in industry.


There can be nothing more stultifying or sterile than to be in a job that only half exists, or perhaps does not exist at all, whiling away the time until the end of the day. In a recent television programme by a critical, if somewhat outdated, Amercian commentator, perhaps the most galling scene was that of shipyard workers at Sunderland calling and shouting to be let out a quarter of an hour before their due time had expired. Theirs is an industry which is very seriously threatened, as the Minister knows only too well.
There are long parts of the day in which no work properly exists for many workers in British industry, and it is not surprising that they turn to strikes, disruptive action and meetings in working hours as a means to alleviate boredom. As I know from personal experience, nothing is worse than montony, having a job which does not exist and trying to fill out one's time to look as if one is working. In these terms, this is a tragedy for our country.
In consequence of this low level of production, virtually any section of British industry can provide examples of serious overmanning and poor productivity. Figures produced by the British Steel Corporation and supported by others from the United States show that for every 100 tons per year produced by a man in the British steel industry, the output of a French steel worker is 140 tons, of a German 160 tons, of an American 200 tons, and of a Japanese 250 tons.
These are frightening figures. They mean that the bad news for this country comes not just from Ghent but from all over the world. It is ironic that at Llanwern we had the most efficient blast furnace in the country, but it lay idle for a year because of disputes. The choice of the man most prominent in the disputes to light the furnace at the end of those tragic 12 months proves why the English sense of humour rightly has the reputation of being unique.
I wish to concentrate specifically on the British car industry because there is a wealth of information available on it, ranging from the Ryder Report, that rushed-out parliamentary potboiler which sought to meet an urgent situation, through the more considered Report of

the Expenditure Committee to perhaps the most authoritative document, the Report of the Central Policy Review Staff—the think tank—on the future of the industry.
I also take the car industry because of its importance to this country. I do not wish to overlook its success, which last year led to an increase, of 38 per cent., in exports, total sales of £2½ billion, and a net favourable balance of trade of £1½ billion. This is very important. The motor vehicle industry is highly complex, with the different sectors making different contributions. Very often the focus rests on the car-making side. This is where the threat has been in recent years and where evidence of poor productivity is most easily available.
Ford, at Dagenham, is outside my constituency, but it is an important company for many of my constituents and for many people throughout the country. One wonders why the CPRS figures are not quoted more often. Certainly levels of production rarely find any prominence in ministerial speeches. Perhaps the words in King Lear are true:
Truth's a dog must to kennel.
Or, as T. S. Eliot said:
Human kind cannot bear very much reality".
But the reality is breaking in on us and facts must be faced. It should not be condemned as unpatriotic to bring them to people's attention and publish them as widely as possible. The facts of the CPRS Report are damning and significant.
The CPRS makes clear that,
The British car industry has serious competitive weaknesses.
The obligatory side-swipe at management is taken, which may be earned, and other criticisms include,
There are too many manufacturers with too many models, too many plants, and too much capacity. These are the responsibility of management. Other severe weaknesses are poor quality, bad labour relations, unsatisfactory delivery record, low productivity, and too much manpower. With the same power at his elbow and doing the same as his Continental counterpart, a British car assembly worker produces only half as much output per shift.
That is a significant statistic.
These weaknesses basically arise on the shopfloor and it is on the shopfloor that they must be corrected.
We have sought to elude this conclusion in recent years by urging that


more investment is needed, but it cannot be denied that with the same power at his elbow, the British car worker is not competitive with his counterparts elsewhere in the industrial world.
In the Ford organisation there are plants in different countries making virtually the same cars. Ford at Dagenham, makes the Cortina and at Genk it makes the Taunus, which is very nearly the same car, in all but 5 per cent. of its details. Standard hours are set for the completion of both cars. While the Belgians are 6 per cent. or 7 per cent. off their target time for production, the Dagenham workers are 65 per cent. off target. That may seem bad, but it gets worse. The workers at Halewood produce an Escort identical to the one produced at Saarlouis, in Germany. The Halewood workers take more than twice the target time for production compared with the Germans, who are about 10 per cent. off the target time.
There are no alibis left. It may be claimed that we need more investment, but that is not the reason for the examples of poor productivity which I have given.
To take another example, in terms of added value, the Opel firm in Germany are peak performers with a production per man of something like £6,000. If we take that as 100 per cent., in comparison, Ford in Germany is 98 per cent., Renault in France 90 per cent., Ford in Dagenham 69 per cent., Vauxhall 59 per cent., Leyland 44 per cent. and Chrysler 41 per cent. That is the measure of the difference between our car companies and their productivity per worker in terms of added value—created wealth—and some of their competitors in Europe. It will not have escaped the attention of the public that their money is being put into the two bottom companies.
As a trading nation, we need to create extra wealth. We depend on it not only for our wages and welfare but for new investment and a competitive position in world industry. This fact was brought home to me on a recent visit to the Bristol division of Rolls-Royce engines. Many examples of marvellous British technology are produced there, and I was shown a small amount of crude metal, costing no more than £30 which, by the end of the process, was turned

into a sophisticated piece of high technology worth the equivalent of a new Mini.
This is where our productive expertise ought to be put to good use. We have ingenuity and skills which are renowned and respected throughout the world. That is where we should be concentrating our efforts. Until the discovery of oil off our shores, we had always been an island of limited resources, based on coal mines and surrounded by a sea of cod—both of which have been the scene of intermittent hostilities recently. We must depend upon our ingenuity and skill rather than on resources which are available to us by accident of geography or history.
Added value is a useful concept in political terms. "Profits", which is the concern of my motion, is a pejorative term. After being abused by politicians throughout the decades it takes on a meaning that is undeserved. We are probably irreparably handicapped for making the profits we need if we as a nation are to turn the corner. On the other hand "added value" specifically indicates the process of creating new wealth. On that new wealth must depend the improved prosperity of the British people. From it people will be paid wages and salaries, and from it investment sources will be found. If there is to be an improved standard of living it will be from that new wealth.
Dr. Frank Jones, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a director of Philips, has extended the added value concept to other industries. Plessey—another company which has a branch in my constituency—in comparison with Sony, the Japanese manufacturer, has a figure of added value per worker of under £3,000, whereas for Sony the figure is over £10,000. That is another illustration of the scale of difference, which the motion highlights, between our productivity and that of our competitors.
There is a much greater disparity between the way in which that added value is spent in this country and in Japan on wages and salaries, pensions and other welfare contributions. For Sony that contribution is about 38 per cent. and for Plessey it is about 75 per cent. Generalising between British and Japanese companies, one finds that


whereas the Japanese might take half-and-half for these purposes, the proportion in England is much higher. In Germany there is a lower contribution from added value to wages and salaries. In America it is lower still, at 45 per cent., 55 per cent. being retained for dividends, investment and new capital development.
The Cambridge Economic Group's report, which started this gloomy week, points out that since 1965 the increase in income, in real terms, is £5,200 million and the increase in claims on that income is £16,400 million. That shows an inflationary gap of £11,200 million, which, as we know to our cost and as will be confirmed on Tuesday, has been financed by reducing stocks and borrowing abroad.
The report put it well by saying that this was a succinct way of demonstrating simultaneously our poor performance in terms of productivity and competitiveness and an unwillingness to accept the consequences in terms of lower living standards. That comes out in the recorded utterances of Hugh Scanlon, who, when forced up against a wall, will finally claim as his reason for pressing for more money for his members that they are poorly paid by comparison with their counterparts on the Continent and elsewhere. That is not an economic justification. That improved standard of living has to be earned, and we are patently not earning the standard of living we enjoy. Inevitably, that standard of living has to be forgone and a lower standard of living accepted, or we have to improve our productivity and reach the levels of production achieved elsewhere.
It follows from this that profitability in British industry is pitifully low in real money terms, in return on capital and in tax yield. No one would dispute that contention. In case anyone should try, I shall draw one or two illustrations. It has been shown that in five of the nine years between 1965 and 1973, retained profits did not go to meet the tax interest and dividends claimable on them. Therefore, money was not available for investment. We are always handicapped by not having the latest figures, but one can assume, without being prejudicial, that in the past two years the position was worse. In 1960 the return on capital before tax was 13 per cent. By 1974 it had declined to 4 per cent. After tax the equivalent

descent was from 9 per cent. to zero. One can imagine that many companies make real losses, whatever may be the apparent Inflation-made profits published in the newspapers without proper commentary or explanation.
There is, therefore, this outdated belief that British industry is profitable, that there is profiteering, and that individual members of our community are securing a much bigger share of the proverbial cake than they should, but that is not so. We cannot test that theory to breaking point but we have already seen the consequences through workers now beginning to understand that unless their company is profitable their jobs are at risk and redundancies are inevitable. Unemployment is higher now than it has been at any time since the war, and it is likely to persist and possibly get worse.
We must look to an improvement in profitability. One factor, apart from the general recession and poor performance in productivity, is the Price Code, an instrument of price control introduced nearly four years ago and intended to meet a short-term need. It was a quid pro quo to achieve wage restraint, at that time statutory, now voluntary. It was introduced in a hurry and was related to the historic background of the time, in particular to the five years from 1968 to 1973, which are irrelevant in 1976. In two of those years company profits were geared to performance. The Price Code can hardly be relevant to the post oil price increase era, yet still that basis of measurement is used.
After a period of inflation which reached its peak at 26·9 per cent., we have the delusion that prices are being controlled by the code. They are, in small measure. The Code hurt. It cut into price increases, but only at a time of maximum inflation. It is contended now that the Code is at best ineffective and at worst damaging to the few companies that can make profits over their reference levels.
The Price Commission's Report on the action of the Price Code shows that profits generally are well below 50 per cent, of the Price Commission's reference levels—well below half what the Government would permit companies to earn if they could. One might say that an instant argument for retaining the Price


Code is that it does not affect the companies. But companies do not operate on a smooth flow of profitability over the years. Many companies, by the nature of their products and services, are cyclical, others fluctuate. The reason why companies have survived for so many years is that they have weathered the bad years by resources garnered in the good years, whereas the Price Code takes no account of fluctuations of that order. It does not allow companies to market when demand is strong and when prices can be put at a high level, so as to reap the benefits in the interests of the slacker years when there is a lower level of production and enable companies to keep on staff and employees.
There are other more minor but none the less significant and irritating aspects of the Code, particularly in terms of productivity. There is the double productivity deduction. One aspect of this is the deduction for allowable cost purposes of 20 per cent. of any increase in labour costs. With the first full flow of labour pressures building up, it has been a penalty on the company to make that deduction, because the company had no chance at all of achieving a productivity gain equivalent to 20 per cent. It merely had to pay up and look big about it. Therefore, it is something of a misnomer, if not an actual deception, to call it a productivity deduction.
In the old days, productivity was a potent factor in wage negotiations, but the extra wages were paid only when productivity was achieved. Nowadays it is just a device for increasing wage awards. Then there is the fact that, because profits are controlled by reference to unit costs, if a company can reduce its costs it does not benefit, because that reduction has to be passed on to the consumer.
It may be argued that it is fine for the consumer, but that is the short-term approach to industry's problems which is proving so damaging, because there is no incentive on companies to reduce their profits in this way. As they are allowed profits on a percentage of turnover, this merely has the effect, unless they are able to increase turnover, of lowering the actual profit they are allowed.
Productivity and profitability are two key factors in the need for new investment.

This is very much the message of our time. Investment can come only from improved profits and improved return on capital invested. Capital is not only invested by companies from the profits they make; it is invested by small savers, by institutional savers, but that can be encouraged only if they can see a sufficient return for their money to make it worth their while, otherwise they may find that investing their savings in objects for the household gives a better return.
In the more elevated circles, restricted though those now are, this may take the form of investment in gold, silver, precious stones, and so on, but we shall not get investment in industry unless there is a sufficient return, and that manifestly has not been the case, particularly with dividend restraint and limits on company profits. The Government have a chance, in their Budget next week, to do something about this. I hope, too, that they will take note of the need for making other reforms. That is why the motion calls for early evidence of the Government's determination.
I should like to link what I have said this morning with a quotation from a speech made by the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection on 28th January. She said:
To obtain a national consensus on profits is … a major priority. Without it we shall not obtain the productive investment we all need so badly. At a time when the profit squeeze has demonstrated its damaging effects on investment and jobs, there is a growing recognition on the part of employees that job security depends vitally on the profitability of their enterprises, and that profitability is very much dependent on productivity, income restraint and industrial peace.
That puts it very well, but it is not sufficient for Government Ministers to make speeches of that character and courage to the Financial Times counter-inflation conference, as in this case, or to a meeting of finance houses in the City. They must have the courage to go out and put the message to the public—and in particular to the workers in industry.
Let Ministers make speeches of that order on the occasion of the Durham miners' gala. Let them celebrate Labour Day by revealing to their supporters, and to people of all parties in the unions, that unless productivity improves, and unless profitability is no longer to be regarded as a dirty word, their jobs are


at risk. Let Ministers state clearly on such occasions that we are being sustained in our present faltering standard of living only by the generosity of overseas lenders, that this cannot go on, and that they know it cannot go on.
This is the issue which is leading to a loss of loyalty among union members towards their leaders. As long as the leaders can deliver the goods in terms of increased pay and secure jobs, they will have their members' support, but once they fail and the members see that their incomes in real terms are slipping very badly and that their jobs are being lost in hundreds of thousands, month after month, the leadership will have lost the strength of its support. That, presumably, is a matter of some concern to the Labour Government.
Taxation does its deadly work as well. If we want evidence of the poor profitability of British industry at this time, we can see it in the figures of the tax revenue for the current year, where corporation tax accounts for 7·9 per cent., its lowest since it was introduced 10 years ago, whereas income tax, which falls on an increasing number of us—virtually all of us nowadays—takes for the first time more than half the tax revenue. That is the balance which is so fundamentally wrong in Government strategy.
At this time, on Friday 2nd April, looking forward to next Tuesday's Budget, we must hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take the opportunity to remedy many of these very clear needs of British industry and of the British people at large.
I hope that the Minister, in his reply, will favour the House by not reading copiously from his well-thumbed copy of the Chequers conference communique, because few people can have very great confidence in that. It was undermined right at the start by the Chrysler negotiations—which had already begun—when it was revealed that despite that conference statement, short-term expedients and, in particular, political considerations in the face of the Scottish National Party onslaught in Scotland, counted more with the Government than did the needs of the country in the longer term.

As long as that attitude persists, we cannot solve these fundamental problems.
It is, after all, a matter of great concern to people to know that their industry is profitable and that it can still be the basis for this country returning to the prosperity it enjoyed for so long, and could enjoy again, given our skills.
A week is a long time in politics. Five months is approaching infinity in regard to industrial strategy. If we continue on this course we shall impoverish future generations. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed money. We are taking the future from our children and our children's children by mortgaging this country up to the hilt. If we do not arrest this catastrophic course, they will not thank us for it. We are trustees for those future generations, and have no right to a standard of living that is way beyond our present means.

11.38 a.m.

Mr. Ernest G. Perry: I congratulate the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) on his good fortune once again in winning a place in the Ballot for a motion on a Friday. I believe that this is the second time the hon. Gentleman has won it since he has been a Member of the House.
The hon. Gentleman's actions and those of his party somewhat belie the terms of the motion. He asks the Government to intervene and do something about increased investment in industry. Every time the Government try to do this in any of our major industries, however, the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends do everything they possibly can to prevent the Government carrying out such a policy. What the hon. Gentleman said in his speech bore no real relationship to his motion.
At one stage in his speech the hon. Gentleman referred to the report last weekend from the Cambridge Economics Group, and its gloomy predictions for this country. I think that the hon. Gentleman surpassed the Cambridge Economists with his own gloomy predictions for the country in the very near future, although he is not usually the sort of Member to adopt a very gloomy attitude. This morning, however, the hon. Gentleman has been spreading gloom rather


like a farmer spreads muck on his fields. I am surprised that at a time like this, just before the Budget, we should find ourselves listening to a gloomy speech of that type.
In just a few moments the hon. Gentleman glossed over such matters as taxation, investment, the Price Code, the oil crisis, profitability, unemployment, productivity and dividend restraint. He went through all those subjects extremely rapidly as though they were of secondary importance and could be dismissed in moments. However, each of the subjects on which he touched is sufficiently important to justify a motion to itself and for the House to spend a day discussing it.
I took exception to several of the items which the hon. Gentleman discussed. He sought to blame our ills on the ordinary person below the executive class. He spoke of people getting a full week's pay for half a week's work.

Mr Cyril Smith: It looks as if that may be the case among a great many Government supporters this morning.

Mr. Perry: I hope the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that Members of Parliament get a full week's pay for half a week's work. There are a great many hon. Members who come from the provinces, from Scotland and Wales, from the North and from the South-West who have to return to their constituencies on Fridays because that is the only day when they can see their local authority representatives to try to solve many of the problems of their constituents. I hope that no one will denigrate an hon. Member who is not here on a Friday. I happen to be a London Member. I see a surfeit of London Members in the Chamber this morning. There are at least three present. London Members regard it as a sacred duty to come here on Fridays to show their constituents that we are here.
But do not let us think badly of hon. Members from the far North, from the South-West, from Scotland and Wales and even from such remote places as Rochdale who cannot always be here on Fridays. Usually they are working in their constituencies attempting to solve the problems of their constituents. It is unfair to say that Members of Parliament should be here 24 hours a day and seven

days a week. I resent it when it is suggested that Members of Parliament are fully paid but work only three days a week. I suppose that there are no harder working people in this House than those who occupy Mr. Speaker's Chair. They put in a tremendous number of hours, as do Front Bench spokesmen on both sides of the House. Therefore, if anyone makes that kind of suggestion, I reject it straight away.
The hon. Member for Romford spoke of workers below the executive level who do not pull their weight, who do not do their jobs properly and who might be said to "skive off" all the time. He spoke of workers rushing to get out a quarter of an hour early and so on. But let us put the blame where it belongs. If the management of a firm cannot organise its workpeople so that they do the job they are supposed to do, it is management which is lacking. What is more, this this area of inefficiency—because I admit that that is what it is—exists not only on the factory floor but in the boardroom as well. I know that most directors spend all their time in the business trying to make their firms profitable, but there are the skivers on any board of directors who would rather be on the golf course than on the shop floor talking to shop stewards and foremen. This applies is ail sections of British industry. We have to put the blame on certain people, and some of them are politicians.
I remember the 1959 General Election, when the then Prime Minister, Mr. Harold Macmillan, a man whom I greatly admire, used that famous phrase
You never had it so good ".
It was the way he said it on television and over the radio that won him the election. However, it was an incentive to people to think that all was well, that they were all right and that they did not have to change their ways. But this country has to change its ways if it is to survive in this economic world.
However, we shall not solve our problems by playing off one section against another. It was the Conservative Party in power from 1970 to 1974 which introduced the Price Code, about which the hon. Member for Romford spoke. Lord Barber, then Anthony Barber and Chancellor of the Exchequer, realised the dangerous situation that the


country was in, and in full sincerity and earnestness he literally gave away hundreds of millions of pounds to help wealthy companies and wealthy taxpayers in the hope that it would be reinvested in industry. Unfortunately, the money did not go into industry. It went into property investment.
I shall not give the figures this morning, but I have obtained some statistics from the Library showing the capital exported from this country since 1972–73, and they show that it was twice as much as the amount of capital imported for development. The amount of capital sent out of this country for development abroad far exceeds the amount of foreign capital coming in. I see that the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) is bursting to intervene. I do not want to give the figures, since I happen to know that they will be given in the course of a maiden speech by one of my very good Friends. The figures are in the Library, and they show that the amount of capital going out of the country during this period is more than double the amount coming in.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: May I refer the hon. Gentleman to an answer given yesterday by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who said that there was a net capital inflow in 1975. 1974 and 1973?

Mr. Perry: I shall have to compare the figures supplied to me by the Library with what the hon. Member says. One of the problems in this House is that people draw different conclusions from different sets of figures. I cannot take up in any detail what the hon. Gentleman said, because the figures supplied to me are reliable since they come from the Library's statistics department, and I am prepared to accept them. However, I do not suggest that what the hon. Member for Woolwich, West said is not true. This is merely another indication of how careful we have to be about what we say when we are discussing figures of this kind.

Mr. John Garrett: Is my hon. Friend aware that the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) is almost certainly confused about this matter? He is referring to investment in manufacturing industry, whereas as a result of inflation very little capital went

into manufacturing industry. Instead it went into the financial institutions. On the other hand, when the last Conservative Government were in office, as a result of the encouragement to British industrialists to invest, the amount of investment abroad trebled.

Mr. Perry: I am obliged to my hon. Friend for that information. However, I do not agree that the hon. Member for Woolwich, West is confused. I have listened to him on many occasions. I know that he examines problems in detail and tries to find solutions. I give him full credit for that.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) pointed out, that was what happened in 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer tried to check it. Unfortunately he failed, and that failure led to many of the crises about which the hon. Member for Romford spoke.
My main object in speaking this morning is to say that I agree with most of the terms of the motion but that the actions of the Conservative Party belie the terms of the motion. Every time that the present Government try to help firms, we have lengthy debates about why we should not do it. Often when a piece of legislation of this kind goes upstairs to Committee, barriers are put in the way of getting it through the Committee stage. It is happening now. The Opposition call for Government help, investment and resources to assist certain industries. When the Government respond and the necessary Bill goes to Committee, the proceedings are delayed in order to create a political log jam.

The Minister of State, Department of Industry (Mr. Gerald Kaufman): Is my hon. Friend aware that today is a day off for me from Standing Committee D on the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill? In that Committee we have had 44 sittings—107 hours—in which the Opposition have been frittering away time which is essential to the salvation of the shipbuilding industry and to the progress of the aircraft industry. The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright), who is a member of the Committee, has in disgust given up attending because of the antics that are going on.

Mr. Perry: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. I know of his devotion to duty in that Committee. He provides an answer to the hon. Member for Woolwich, West, who remarked how lazy MPs were. The hon. Member should go to the Committee Floor—perhaps he even attends Committees—and there he will sec Members sitting for 12 hours a day on matters of vital importance to the country. MPs should be given credit for that.

Mr. Michael Marshall: I am sure that the hon. Member will want to put the record straight in view of his knowledge of Committee proceedings. For the Minister of State to whip in that swift "commercial" was disgraceful. Those of us who read the Official Report of the Committee's proceedings know that many views are put forward from the Government Benches by prominent Government supporters. One point which comes through repeatedly is that it is wrong to bring aerospace and shipbuilding within one Bill. That view is shared on all sides of the Committee as well as in the House.

Mr. Perry: To some extent I must agree with the hon. Member for Arundel (Mr. Marshall). The Government may have made a mistake. I do not intend, however, to criticise the legislative procedure or how Bills are put together. My concern is to stress the devotion to duty of hon. Members on both sides of the House. I reject the hon. Member's suggestion that my hon. Friend the Minister of State got in a quick "commercial". It is sometimes difficult for Front Benchers to do that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he said. It is wrong for barriers to be placed in the way of the Government's attempts to assist industry.
I agree with the motion that we need better profitability. The word "profit" is not such a nasty word today as it was 50 or 100 years ago. Even the Soviet Union recognises that profitability and profits oil the wheels of progress. We hope, however, that profits are used to enhance investment and for the benefit of everybody in the country. To that end I want greater productivity and profitability.
The hon. Member for Romford should not take such a gloomy view. If we stop

blaming different parts of society for our troubles, if we stop laying them at the door of the factory worker or the board of directors and instead join together in a co-operative effort between all sections, the country will pull itself out of the rut it is in. That is the task which confronts us and which on Tuesday my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the help of the House and the country, must try to perform.

11.56 a.m.

Mr. Cyril Smith: I agree with much of the speech by the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Perry), and particularly with his remarks at the end. I equally agree with his opening compliment to the hon. Members for Romford (Mr. Neubert) on having secured two opportunities to move motions. We have had many debates on the problems of British industry. I am not sure how far they go towards solving its problems. I suspect sometimes that industry might find it easier to solve them if less was said in this House. Nevertheless, as politicians I suppose that we must react to matters of public interest and concern. Certainly the importance of British industry should not be underestimated.
The problems of productivity, productive investment and profitability are of prime interest. I find nothing objectionable about profit and the profit motive, and many Labour Members agree with me. We are concerned not with profit but with how it is made and what happens to it. Those are the key factors, not the pure principle of making a profit. I share the concern of Labour Members about how profit is made and what use is made of it.
Another key question is the extent to which taxation is used as an incentive for industry to invest in new, more productive methods. What is required in any review of taxation is an examination not only of the levels of tax but of the method by which it is applied. In the last 13 years I have been building up a small business and I have been intrigued by some aspects of taxation. The point came for my company that we were compelled by law to pay a dividend even though we did not want to do so. This shows that companies do not always get encouragement to reinvest capital. It


illustrates the need for a review of the method by which taxation is applied. Obviously everyone looks for opportunities to pay less tax, and we view with great anticipation next Tuesday's Budget in view of the noises that have been made in the period leading up to it. Certainly, anything that is done to reduce taxation will be welcomed by all sections of the community.
In the end, however, we have to understand that if we want as a State to assist the poorer members of society who are unable to assist themselves, such as pensioners and the disabled, or if we want the finest education system in the world, we have to pay for these things. The only way to pay for them is by taxing people, but it must be done in a reasonable way which nevertheless ensures that there is sufficient money in the kitty.
My basic purpose in intervening in the debate is to say that I am a little surprised that the motion does not refer to the need for a new approach to industry. Over the years we have tried to patch up the leaks to keep out the water rather than come up with a new approach to industry and by industry, with a new method of organising industry.
I am talking about a matter which is now exercising the Bullock Committee's inquiry into worker participation in industry. Industry needs long-term stability, faith in the future and a fair return on investment. It needs to feel that it is guaranteed a long-term future and that the changes of political philosophies, reflected in changes of Government, will not directly affect its economic concept over time.
Industry needs a fundamental change. That fundamental change must be the development of a partnership between workers and shareholders. That is one of the long-term solutions to the problems of British industry. New methods of reduced taxation, increased profitability and so on are all very well in their place, but a new approach and concept are required so that works councils, for example, become meaningful.
I was the secretary of a works council 30 years ago. In retrospect, I realise that what we got were the crumbs off the table. It was meant to keep the

workers happy. It had no power. It did nothing. It ran a sports league and occasionally passed a resolution about, for example, a bus being required for workers at 5 o'clock in the morning. That was as far as we were allowed to "interfere". We want meaningful works councils which have a direct influence on the policies of their companies.
The Liberal Party believes in supervisory boards and the rights of employees to serve on them. Indeed, I hope that the Bullock Committee will arrive at that conclusion—that remains to be seen—and will influence the Government to arrive at the same conclusion. The only major difference of opinion between the Liberal Party and the Government, when the matter becomes a reality next year, is likely to be on the issue of who should represent the workers. Will representation be confined to trade unionists or will it be extended to elected representatives of workers who are not members of trade unions? I suspect that that will be the only major difference between the Government and my party on the question of worker participation in industry.
The Liberal Party believes in the principle of profit-sharing. I practise that principle in my own company. I have often wondered over the years how much effect it might have had on wage negotiations if workers had known that they would share directly in cash in the company's annual profits. No one is advocating a 100 per cent. pay-out of profit or anything of that kind. Workers are not daft. They understand that part of the profit must be used for reinvestment and so on. However, what they cannot understand is how one fellow can have a cream-off of five figures from the profits when their own cream-off is their weekly wage and nothing else at the end of the year. I have often felt, particularly during the last five or six years, that if employees knew that wage restraint which resulted in increased profit would inevitably mean a percentage of that increased profit going back to them in cash at the end of the year, as well as to a certain group of people, it would have been a greater incentive for them to accept some kind of wage restraint.
Reference has been made to the problems in the car industry. I hope that the toolmakers in that industry will return to work. The Government's pay policy is


right. I can say that, having voted for it. That is more than hon. Members on the Benches behind me can say for themselves. It was intriguing for me to see the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on television last year urging the nation to support the Government's pay policy when in fact he had been unable to do so in the Lobby. I suppose that is how politics work. However, I voted for the Government's pay policy, so I am entitled to urge that it should be upheld by all sections of industry and to point out to the toolmakers in the company concerned that they have a responsibility to the nation as well as to themselves. Those problems will be solved in time—in days or in weeks. Such problems come and go.
We need a new approach and new ideas. We need something different. We need to create a partnership, as the hon. Member for Battersea, South said. We need all people to feel that they are part of our great industrial empire. They should not feel that they are merely people who come on a Monday and go on a Friday with what is in their wage packets and that that is all they have to do with it. They must be made to feel that they are part of the whole.
The problems of British industry will not be solved merely by new methods of taxation, increased productivity or profitability. They will be solved in the long term only by creating a partnership between workers and shareholders, a partnership which the Liberal Party has advocated since 1928.

12.7 p.m.

Mr. John Garrett: I regret that I missed the early part of the speech by the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) when he introduced this important subject, but I was engaged on business of the House.
I intend to range rather more widely than did the hon. Gentleman. I propose not to refer to Budget matters but to focus principally on the accountability of management in industry and on who calls the managers to account. In doing so, I shall touch on some of the themes contained in what I thought was a very thoughtful and perceptive speech by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith).
Clearly, no public policy is more fundamental than industrial policy. Britain's industrial performance underpins our survival as a nation and ultimately provides the means for all the social and welfare expenditures of the Government and for advancing the quality of life of our people. There is also no question that our industrial performance over a long period has been wholly inadequate to provide the economic growth required to satisfy the rising aspirations and demands of our people for better living standards.
British industry has not been able to hold its own with its competitors. We have a record far inferior to that of our competitors in the growth of industrial output, productivity, exports and the ability to resist imports of manufactured goods from abroad.
British industry's relative failure in competitiveness and innovation was first noticed in the 1860's—100 years before any question of price controls—and since then books papers and reports have been produced by the thousand analysing our relative decline and proposing solutions to the problem. But the decline has continued. It has continued through periods of interventionist and laissez-faire policies, it has continued despite political sloganising and exhortation and it has continued as, inevitably, Governments have tried a variety of means to encourage employment, investment, technological advance and improved management.
We now know a great deal about the course of the decline and the possible causes of it. Some factors are clearly historical. It appears that for a very long time there were major structural imbalances in our manufacturing industry. Britain continued to specialise in the basic industries of the Industrial Revolution—coal, steel and simple textiles—when Germany and America were developing to a far greater extent than we were the new technologies of electrical equipment, chemicals, vehicles and metal-working machinery. Up to the present time, our national expenditure on research and development has been heavily biased towards aviation, atomic energy and computers, whereas German expenditure on research and development has


been almost entirely on machinery industries, which have a good export record.
There has also been an imbalance of markets for our manufacturing industry. For a very long time, until recently, British industry relied heavily for its overseas sales on protected Commonwealth markets which, on the whole, required less sophisticated equipment than American and West European markets. Therefore, there was less pressure on us than on others to be in the forefront of the commercial application of advanced technologies, some of which originated in this country and were taken up by others before we brought them to the market place.
We know that British industrialists invest less in their home manufacturing facilities than do our competitors. British investment in new plant and equipment is at a far lower level than German, Japanese, French and American investment. That has been true for a very long time. It has been attributed to the cautious attitudes of British management—although the level of our investment abroad has always been relatively higher than that of our competitors—and to low levels of profitability in Britain, although our investment was low even in the early 1960s when returns in general for manufacturing industry were three times what they are now.
It is true throughout the world that there is a decline in return on investment in manufacturing industries: this is something to do with the marginal productivity of each new piece of investment in advanced industries. The problem has also been attributed to the sources of finance for British investment. This is a much more important criticism. British companies have traditionally relied upon the stock market for finance, while in Germany, France and America much medium-term finance has come from the banks. As a result, in Germany, for example, banks have become willing to become shareholders and to monitor and intervene in the management of companies to safeguard their shareholdings.
More than 50 per cent. of British shares are now owned by institutions which have hitherto rarely tried to protect their investment by acting upon a board of

management but have usually simply switched their holdings elsewhere when they did not like the way in which a company was being run. In recent years the Bank of England has signally failed to pressurise institutional investors to intervene in companies whose shares they hold. As the institutions were not interested, and individual shareholders in large companies are virtually powerless, there has been no one to call boards of directors to account for their performance. The crucial question is the accountability of boards of directors for the use they make of the resources they control.
Even when investment takes place, the return on it in this country is markedly less than it is in other countries. The reasons for this have been attributed to overmanning, bad industrial relations and the idleness of the British worker. Certainly there is overmanning in industry. There would be little problem in overcoming it with adequate policies for retraining and creating new jobs. The problem is that much of the reduction in overmanning is required in areas of already high unemployment, in areas in which regional policy has failed and has not so far created sufficient new sources of employment or job opportunities.
Our industrial relations record was at about the international average until the Conservative Government's venture into industrial relations law. The British worker works long hours, has less sick leave, indulges in less absenteeism and has fewer holidays than his counterparts, and he works at roughly the same tempo. Therefore, charges of idleness against him are certainly quite unsubstantiated.
Manufacturing procedures and systems have not been developed as fast in Britain as in other countries. This is crucial to the question of improved productivity. The rate of diffusion of good management practice from the best firms to the worst appears to be inordinately slow. When I first became a management consultant in the 1960's, management consultants were getting most of their business from teaching companies the arts of work study, which were developed in the United States at the turn of the century and incorporated into normal manufacturing procedures


in the United States and Germany in the 1920's and introduced here in 1926. The other main activity of consultants at that time was the installation in British industry of budgetary control which was first developed in 1919. Therefore, there was a 30-year lead time between the time at which a new manufacturing of operating procedure was developed abroad and its being taken up here.
I believe that the question of the diffusion of the best management practices is crucial. The success of British management in agriculture and in retailing, in which our management is as good as any in the world, lies partly in the speed with which the best practice is translated throughout those industries, whereas in the engineering industry it can be years before the best management practices are taken up by the doziest companies.
I believe that the heart of the problem lies with management—its competence, status, training and provenance, and particularly who is to call it to account. I also believe that both sides of the argument indulge in dangerous stereotyping. Both Left and Right have an image of management which falsifies the issues. Spokesmen for private enterprise often maintain that our driving, dynamic business men want only to be left alone to maximise profits for the good of all of us. Spokesmen for the Left often maintain that private enterprise capitalism is concerned only with maximising profits regardless of the human costs that result. The truth is much more complex than either of those arguments assumes.
Today in this country we have managerialism rather than capitalism. Industry is run not by owners but by technocrats, and the aim of the technocrat is usually not to maximise profit but to have a quiet life, preferably with regular promotion. All my experience in looking at the behaviour of top management—and there is plenty of research evidence that confirms this—indicates that, although management is happy to play lip service to the ideal of profit maximisation, its behaviour shows that it really aims to make only sufficient profit to keep the share price up and to avoid a take-over.
Management rarely gives a thought to the shareholder. Why should it?

The shareholder cannot call management to account. This attitude is especially entrenched in British management, where to be a thruster is to invite suspicion. I conclude that, until management is made accountable to the community for the results that it achieves, we shall never improve our industrial performance.
Management is a low-status occupation in Britain. The public service and the City pay much more. The best young brains do not go into management, because it appears to be an unworthy occupation. Places for engineering students are grossly under-subscribed. As a Member for a university constituency, I know that places for social science students are oversubscribed 10 times. We produce fewer than 300 graduate production engineers a year, and the number is declining. I recall a figure in relation to the great university of Oxford, which has seven professors of theology but only one of engineering. That is an indication of the general relative importance of our educational priorities.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: I do not know whether I may be able to help the hon. Gentlemen's argument, but I remember reading last week that more people applied last year to take a degree in Welsh—although that is a great language—than in production engineering.

Mr. Garrett: That helps the argument—and I thank my Member of Parliament for making the point. In our education system at large there are no industrial priorities. Industrial policy is constituted on an entirely different frame of reference, and there is no planning for industrial support.
We were late in the field of management education, and it is still inadequate. It is always an interesting lesson to compare an American factory with a British one. It is noticeable that as soon as one walks through the door of an American factory one is confronted by the graduate foreman, who has had an education in engineering, in statistics and in the useful arts of management, whereas more often than not our foremen are promoted straight from the shop floor with virtually no formal training at all. Too often boards of directors still get there by connection, by social


origin rather than management expertise, and I have found them to be wholeheartedly despised by middle management.
Above all, we waste talent in our industry. Workers are rarely consulted about the organisation of the factory, operating methods, systems and procedures. They are rarely given the opportunity to manage themselves, to use their initiative for innovation and development or to use their creativity and energy. A suggestion scheme is not consultation. I remember a works council on which I served being primarily concerned with the quality of canteen tea, what collections should be made for charity and whether or not there should be a pedestrian crossing outside the factory gate. That is not consultation. Telling workers about management policy is not consultation. A month's notice rather than a week's notice of redundancy is not consultation. Three workers on a board is not consultation. What we need is a structure of genuine consultation, before decisions are made, at the level of the factory and the office.
My prescription for improving British industry is not particularly novel. All the suggestions that I am about to make have been discussed at one time or another, and some of the institutions and procedures which I should like to see exist in embryo already.
The key question, to my mind, is accountability. I believe that the public accountability of large-scale industries should be enforced by compulsory planning agreements. Why are managements nervous of this? A planning agreement should have three main aims: first, to provide a means of enabling worker representatives to consider and advise on, and participate in, corporate plans; second, to examine corporate plans in the light of national industrial objectives and to display corporate objectives and achievements; third, to enable Government assistance to industry to be devoted to specific projects rather than general support. That seems to me to be perfectly acceptable to management, as long as the Government end is handled by competent planners—analysts and not civil servants. Therefore, at the Government end of manning agreement there

should be a planning agency, but not the Department of Industry.
This system of accountability should be set in the context of an overall industrial and trade planning system, establishing broad industrial aims, examining the sectoral strengths and weaknesses of our industrial structure and identifying the gaps in what might be called our industrial portfolio—for example, the areas where imported goods dominate the home market, such as office machinery, textiles and footwear, or where we have a relatively low world market share.
A variety of measures could be devised to close those gaps—selective import controls, Government-owned or supported plants set up for import substitution, use of Government research and development funds, joint ventures between the National Enterprise Board and home or foreign manufacturers, and a national export marketing corporation. The National Economic Development Office is competent to carry out the analysis but it has no experience of running anything or following up with executive action. We need a body similar to the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, which was destroyed by the previous Conservative Government.
The State must take a hand in the direction of investment. We cannot leave these matters to the whims of financial institutions. It is essential that we have a State investment bank to channel savings into industrial activities where the national need is greatest and where the Government can monitor results.
The Government should also promote the diffusion of the best industrial management practice throughout industry. The issuing of bulletins is not enough. The best way is to set up reference plants using the best methods to demonstrate what can be done.
We have put £25 million into the ferrous foundry industry to improve the function of that industry, but it would have been better if some of that money had gone to set up a State-owned, or partly owned foundry, using the best known methods as a reference point for the rest of the industry.
Management is a less tangible area for public policy. We need far better management training. We could use the


NEB and its subsidiaries as a nursery for competent management. More important, by training, encouragement and patient development we could bring shop floor workers into management by reorganising their working methods and establishing a formal structure of co-determination in the plant. The NEB should be setting out to establish that pattern now.
All of those measures would help to develop and make accountable private enterprise managerialism. The proposals also presuppose a determination to extend public control and ownership into the manufacturing industry and to re-create new manufacturing industries under public or joint ownership. Whether they be commanding heights or lame ducks, large corporations must be brought to account for their economic performance, not only for growth and profitability but for the extent to which they meet social needs and take best advantage of the abilities and talents of the workers. In the dominant corporations, accountability can be achieved only by public ownership or control. But intervention on this scale will only work through a new machinery of industrial government which is expert, analytical and able to plan and monitor. It is time to construct that machinery.

12.23 p.m.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: I enjoyed the speech made by my experienced and honourable constituent, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett). I am glad I shall not have to answer him at my surgery tomorrow.
The hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Perry) did not read the motion carefully enough, because it does not call for more Government interference in industry but
urges the Government to give early evidence of its determination to encourage greater productivity and profitability in industry".
What the hon. Member said is rather like saying, if one were dealing with the Children and Young Persons Act, that we want to interfere with the "way in which" parents bring up their children, rather than encourage parents to do that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) gave evidence of the

comparative levels for value-added production, the levels of output of people employed and the rate of return in terms of production or value added for a certain amount of investment. We should not say who is to blame, because we all share blame. We should ask what we can do about it. It is important that we do not look for new answers. Too often we ask about a party leader's new policy to solve an old problem. I do not believe we are likely to discover a totally new approach which is different from everything which has been tried and found to work before.
I now turn to the question of planning. For about 30 years we have had nationalised industries which, presumably, have had the benefit of the best brains within the industry. When, for instance, the steel companies were amalgamated, presumably the best managers and trade union officers were kept on. Steel has been nationalised for about nine years and the coal industry for longer. To what extent has planning within those industries been effective? The management of those industries has been effective to some extent. I am not sure, however, that the planning in either of those two industries, or in British Rail, has given us long-term, firm guarantees of security or improved output or that they have done better against the general rise in the cost of living than any other industry.
It is a very difficult task to run down employment in any of those industries, and I recognise the contribution that the people concerned have made in reducing the number of employees. That task has to be done. One cannot say, however, that the planning procedures in those industries have been that much better than those in other, declining industries, such as bread manufacturing, which has not had any planning agreements. That industry may not be quite a monopoly but it is an oligopoly situation, as the nationalised industries were before they were amalgamated.
The proposals for planning agreements suggested by the hon. Member for Norwich, South, for worker participation, for corporate objectives and for Government assistance to be related to specific projects are not new. The better companies already practise worker participation, and regional employment programmes go


across the board. Therefore, one cannot argue about specific projects. Investment grants and incentives are normally made for specific projects. The better companies using participation and involvement should be used as the models for the rest of industry.
People who are compelled to adopt the best practice will probably miss the point. I remember the story of a retail store which saw that its competitor was opening an hour later on a Monday morning. The manager of the store thought that he should perhaps do the same. He put up a sign on the door saying that the shop would not open until an hour later on Monday mornings. When he was asked why he was doing this, he said that he did not know but that the shop next door was doing it. What he did not know was that the time was being used next door for staff training, briefing and explaining how to get rid of much of the paper work in that chain. To impose on the unwilling or the ignorant the best practice—or the best procedures, which turn into the best practice—does not necessarily do much good.
The areas in which Britain is efficient—retail management and farming—perhaps give more of a clue to the old answer. If we have the NEB and large planning agreements, and if we bring back the IRC, are we not throwing back to the Establishment the power to determine everything that goes on in the country? Is that the kind of democratic centralism which we think is the answer to so many of the problems of our national life? I suggest that it is not.
The expression "the national needs" has been used. The best determinant of many national needs—the case of defence, which we debated for the past two days, is different—is the aggregate of individual demand. I am thinking of such items as footwear, motor cycles and motor cars. In our Western industrialised society we must choose whether we should give the best, fair, firm and long-term guarantees to people as customers, as users of goods and services, or as producers. We are in danger of trying to give too many guarantees to ourselves as producers.
I heard someone say that the best way to get the best brains into productive

industry might be to give all civil servants a month's notice and guarantee everyone a job in industry for the next five years. I do not agree, although I have great respect, as did the speaker, for the brains of those in the Civil Service. I do not think that many civil servants would claim to be able to run industry or lay down guidelines better than the managers and people working in all grades within industry.
If we are to return to the old answers of trying to take the aggregate of individual needs and desires as the national need, which seems to me to make sense, we must recognise the present employment situation. We have 25 million people at work.

Mr. Ernest G. Perry: Drawing wages and salaries?

Mr. Bottomley: I think that that figure includes the self-employed.
There are 10 million job changes a year. Some of them are made by people in casual employment and some by school leavers who can obtain only temporary work until they enter a job which may lead towards a career. Too many have to go into work where there is no career, a matter to which we all agree we need to pay much more attention. But those job changes also have the effect of helping productive industries and service industries to adjust to people's demand for goods and services.
Some well-meaning proposals, including some that I sometimes make, would lead to a far more rigid structure of industry. If that happens, we shall all be made far worse off. Our poor performance in terms of value added, productivity and surplus—profits—has resulted from our being too rigid. As motor car buyers we may decide that a car we have bought for the past 10 years is no longer what we want and decide to buy one of the four which appear from a Which? report to be better. If our choice is a car made overseas and sold at a competitive price, we help to create balance of payments problems. If our industrial production is to change as fast as our preferences when we are making consumer choices, we must be willing to have our industry, and ourselves as industrial producers, adjust just as fast.
I wish that for a debate such as this, especially for a speech as good as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Romford, the Press Gallery were full. There is no point in talking about the country's situation without letting the facts go beyond those in the Chamber and those who might read Hansard. Everyone in the country should know the figures which were presented about an hour ago. I hope that people in industry—managers, trade union representatives and all employees—will make it their business to discover for their own industries the comparative figures for production per man, value from investment, the amount of investment being made and the market demand for their products.
One can obtain no guarantee of employment from any Government, however well-meaning. One can have it only by satisfying the customers as well as, if not better than, one's competitors.

12.36 p.m.

Mr. John Cockroft: The motion has matters the right way round. More employment will come from more investment rather than vice versa. In this country, however, the trend for a long time has been to preserve low-productivity jobs, and, if necessary, create them.
The British steel industry's productivity, for example, is between one-fifth and one-seventh that of the Japanese industry. One receives no credit—certainly the Chairman of the British Steel Corporation received none—for pointing out such figures. In the motor industry the amount of capital equipment behind each worker is about £1,000. At the Volkswagen works in Wolfsburg, Germany, it is about £2,500. Such figures for this country are the result of low investment over many years. In real terms, investment levels in Britain have for a long time been between one-half and one-third of those of most of our international competitors. This means differences in equipment available which will take many years to make up, but that is no reason for not starting now.
One of the factors behind this is that under every Government, for as long as most of us can remember, "profit" has been a dirty word. People have regarded profit as something which went to the

bosses and had no effect on the standard of living of the worker on the shop floor. To that extent "profit" is uniquely a dirty word in this country. I remember that during the 1974 election campaign a Conservative voter asked how I justified the fact that the profits of a major British company had doubled. The announcement had been made that morning. The fact was that the rate of return on its assets, even with the doubled profits, was about half that of its major international competitor.
Such figures must be pointed out much more often. Company taxes and other taxes are now piled one upon another. The Sandilands Report was invaluable for pointing out that large sections of British industry were making little or no money in real terms.
I should like to say a few words about worker participation, about which I used to write a great deal when I was on the Daily Telegraph. The subject has become very fashionable in the past year or two, particularly in the Labour Party, but my party has shown relatively little interest in the problem until recently. The trade unions have been visiting Germany to study the subject. The secret of the German's success is not in having workers on the boards. It is relevant in some cases but not in others. It was in any case forced upon the Germans by the occupying Powers. However, it is very successful at the boardroom level.
The Germans have a knack of defusing problems before they reach crisis stage, which we so often suffer. They have effective works councils, and directors on the main board often talk to the workers about profits and export figures. Until very recently that has not been common in this country. Even when that has been done in this country is has often been done by fiat, by legal thrust from the Government. It has not always been done voluntarily.
A firm which has had some considerable success in its labour relations is Guest Keen and Nettlefolds. I have at long last nearly finished the book I have been writing about that organisation. By means of works councils, by dealing with disputes on the factory floor, the company has established a close degree of contact with its work force. It has been able to defuse disputes to a considerable


extent, thereby preventing them reaching the terrible state of affairs that we find in many of our major industries. It is a great tragedy that many of our industries can be completely immobilised on a Monday morning almost at the drop of a spanner. That is something that must be changed as soon as possible.

12.41 p.m.

Mr. Michael Marshall (Arundel): This has been a valuable debate and one which I have very much enjoyed. I welcome the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) introduced his motion. I believe that he has done us a service by introducing it. I congratulate him on the way in which he spoke. He spoke without a note, but is was clear that he spoke with great knowledge after having made considerable researches. I shall try to take up a number of the points that he made along with other points that have been made by hon. Members from both sides of the House.
I hope that the Minister of State will agree that today has been typical of the sort of Friday proceedings that we enjoy. We welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Chamber. We are glad that he is back among us down on the coal face and away from the rarefied atmosphere of the proceedings in Committee.
It is fair to say that on a Friday—I think I can say this loudly without fear of being overheard in the Press Gallery—we often have a constructive debate and achieve a dialogue, as opposed to the debates in which we try to stand in prepared positions. I invite the Minister to lay aside some of the more powerful and forceful party political lines that I know he can put across with great verve We hope that he will bring his considerable mind to bear on the genuine problems that British industry faces. We shall be genuinely interested to hear what he says. We recognise that he holds high responsibilities. We are concerned about British industry and we want to help. That is why we have tried to take a constructive line.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romford was right to highlight the basic problems of productivity and profitability. Those are the main themes that I shall

develop. However, before doing so I shall take up some of the remarks that have been made by Members from both sides of the Chamber.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romford displayed a valuable degree of sophistication when considering these matters. When he spoke about the added value concept, I believe that he brought to bear an important way of thinking about our problems that we have heard little enough about in the House. Equally, he was right to say that, when people such as Mr. Scanlon talk about the need for British workers' pay to be at the same level as the pay that is received by workers in other countries on the Continent, it is necessary for them to recognise that higher wages must be earned.
There is a temptation to make comparisons which are not valid. We must compare only like with like. If we consider a take-home pay situation in this country and relate it to the equivalent in deutschemarks or French francs, we must take the cost of living and tax implications into account. If we are to make comparisons with international salaries, my hon. Friend is right to stress that salaries can be justified only by the profits that are earned. He is right to say that a comparison should be made only on a proper like-with-like basis.
My hon. Friend also talked about the Price Code. His views about the real impact of the Code which has led to reduced profitability and investment need stressing. My hon. Friend has drawn attention to something which has not been emphasised sufficiently. Equally, he is right to describe certain productivity aspects of the Price Code as bogus, as hiding real wage increases.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Perry) has left the Chamber. I think that he slightly overreacted to some typical Friday badinage about the number of Members present. I agree that it is not the number of Members present but the quality of the speeches that is of prime importance. I think it will be agreed that the speeches have maintained a high standard.
The hon. Gentleman made a basic point that is generally recognised—namely, that Members from both sides of the Chamber are anxious to take the opportunity on a Friday to catch up with


constituency work. It is rightly put on record that we do not regard the turnout on a Friday as a measure of the importance of the subject to be discussed. There are other important subjects on the Order Paper, and I know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you hope to reach some of them later. That is why I intend to be reasonably brief.
The hon. Member for Battersea, South made a balanced speech. I am glad he made it clear that our proceedings in Committee are important and the Government and Opposition Members contribute to them. I hope that I shall be able to turn to aerospace and shipbuilding without straying beyond the bounds of order, and before the Bill which is now in Committee is considered on Report. It is at the back of our minds that my hon. Friend's motion cannot be divorced from many of the Government's present plans and legislative proposals.
I welcome back among us the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith), whom I have not personally had the opportunity of greeting. I hope that he is restored to full health. The hon. Gentleman put forward a view that would find acceptance on both sides of the Chamber when he spoke about participation and industrial democracy. The real problem is that, although most of us accept those words, we find that there are wide differences of view about what they mean in practice. The hon. Gentleman will know that within the trade union movement there are considerable divergences of view. There are differences, for example, about worker representation. However, we agree with the broad thrust of the hon. Gentleman's argument. I hope he will accept that expression.
The hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) brings to these matters a considerable degree of experience which we recognise. As a former consultant myself, I know of the important work he has done over many years. I do not quarrel with his analysis of the longstanding nature of the decline of British industry. His professional view of the low rate of investment in British industry was fair. The level of investment causes concern to anyone who considers the immediate problems with which we in the House are sometimes preoccupied.
When the hon. Member for Norwich, South analysed the causes of the problems—for example, the low rate of investment—he made one or two points with which I must quarrel. I accept what he said about marginal returns, but I quarrel with him in some degree about the question of sources. The hon. Gentleman referred to a basic difficulty for which we in the House have a responsibility—namely, the lack of stability which has applied during the post-war period and the way in which British industry has been unable to plan investment or the way in which it will operate.
For example, let us consider the British Steel Corporation. The Minister of State will be aware that in the nine years of life of the Corporation there have been no fewer than 17 Secretaries of State, almost one Secretary of State every six months. That is typical of the way in which we in this place have not succeeded in achieving a degree of stability and a good relationship between Government, Whitehall, Parliament and the nationalised industries.
The problems of investment are matters that we all understand. The hon. Member for Norwich, South said that we are all looking for a profitable, vigorous and alert British industry. He was basing his argument on the now famous words of the White Paper which preceded the Industry Act. I agree with his analysis about the problems of attracting the best brains. I agree that only a profitable, vigorous and alert British industry will attract them.
We now have a chicken-and-egg situation. The difficulties of British industry are a disincentive to our best brains. The massive increase in GNP taken up by the public sector—it is now almost 60 per cent.—means that more graduates choose to enter the inflation-proof pension and job security form of life which Government service seems to represent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) also gave us a fair assessment of the problems of the inter-relationship between this place, the Government and nationalised industries, and I think that he was right to warn against imposed theoretical solutions. The way in which he put his case seemed to be yet again the classic warning that


we should all resist the Whitehall knows best" approach to life.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nantwich (Mr. Cockcroft), who has not been able to stay, spoke with all the quality of his experience in the steel industry, engineering and the Treasury and as a journalist. When he made the point that "profit" has been regarded as a dirty word in this country, he made an argument which is very close to my heart. The time really has come when all of us on all sides of the House ought to go up and down the country arguing that it is lack of profit which is immoral and which means loss of investment and loss of jobs. I believe that part of the duty of every person who wants to see this country succeed, is to ensure that profit is fairly earned. While we may argue about what that means, let us at least bake the cake before we start dividing it up.
The motion calls upon the Government to encourage productivity and profitability. It is right, therefore, that we should look with a critical eye on the Government's present actions and current proposals. I shall listen to the Minister with particular interest, and I have tried to nudge him in a friendly way to deploy his talents on this subject, perhaps not directly in line with the brief which has been put before him.
We clearly need new thinking if we are to succeed in this area. When we are debating matters of productivity, I think that the most immoral thing is the Government's own actions in respect of the squeeze on profitability which has caused many of our present problems. The way in which the Government have acted and the way in which they have approached their relationship with the nationalised industries bring us squarely to the one area where the Government cannot possibly escape the charge that they are themselves responsible in matters of productivity over large areas of our manufacturing industry which are now nationalised.
When we talk about the other public services—energy, transport, British Rail, the Post Office and so on—although there are arguments about the degree of the monopoly I do not believe that there

is a vast divide across the Floor of the House. For those of us who came to this place because of the involvement of the Labour Government in manufacturing industry, this is the dimension which is of most concern. I declare a past interest as a former participant in the independent steel industry for 16 years. It is no satisfaction to me to feel that my fears about the nationalisation of steel, which prompted me to come into politics, have, alas, been more than justified.
I am trying to urge the Minister today, when considering productivity, to take the example of the British Steel Corporation and see what lessons we can draw from it. I recognise that there are lessons to be drawn at this moment from the motor industry, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romford brought out so powerfully. The Minister and his colleagues will have to bring to bear a good deal of new thinking if they are to have any chance of avoiding the grievous mistakes of the Government's relationship with the British Steel Corporation.
What features have been highlighted by the present Government's relationship with the British Steel Corporation? In broad terms, it is the old cry of "When will they ever learn?". In aerospace industries there is no doubt that expectation of job preservation is already building up. There is no doubt that in companies like Vosper Thornycroft, near my own constituency, there are real fears that nationalisation is founded on such very insubstantial ground. If large engineering groups or major industrial groups with activities in Scotland, Wales, the North-East or elsewhere are brought together, the industrial logic which maintains employment is destroyed in various parts of the country.
The experience of nationalising the 14 largest steel companies producing over 1 million tons, while administratively tidy from the Whitehall point of view, was a classic mistake. Had I conceded the principle—which I do not—that there was an argument for the nationalisation of steel, the argument I would have wished to see was about nationalisation by bringing in companies which could have some proper interrelationship, some kind of helpful efficiency through working together, rather than simply working on the basis of size and the arbitrary shopping list. Once more I fear that we are


back in the worst of these aspects. The question of job security is now one of the cruellest of this kind of proposal. Everyone knows that rationalisation is bound to mean redundancies. It is a fact of life that many of the economic arguments can no longer be sustained when they are applied to a merged body. I believe that the Government—indeed, the Labour Party as a whole—have shown an incredible lack of modesty when they come forward with proposals for more nationalisation.
If the Government could make some concession to the view that there have been problems in the nationalisation of steel, and if an attempt was made to learn from those lessons, those of us who are perhaps trying to put forward constructive views would feel that there was some point in the dialogue. But we simply get the assertion that nationalisation ipso facto is a good thing. It is the whole problem once more of the relationship between central Government and industry which has to be looked at not only by the Government but by this House. There is a place for hon. Members on the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries to play their part. It is noticeable that a much more constructive dialogue is going on in Committees of that kind than in the kind of arguments the Government employ.
I have to put on record as indicative of this kind of mishandling of nationalised industries by the Department the whole question of top management, the way it is treated and the way in which it is actively discouraged. Anyone who goes around the plants of the British Steel Corporation, as I have the opportunity to do, must be saddened by the loss of morale which is undoubtedly a fact of life, and hon. Members who know the facts will know this is the case.
This process was brought to a head recently by the disgraceful way in which Sir Monty Finniston was hounded from office. The Minister knows that some of us had been trying to get an announcement of some kind about this for some time. It was a very shabby business at the end of the line. The way in which we hope to run our industries will not be improved if there seems to be a witch hunt every time someone who runs one of them has the courage to stand up

and spell out unpalatable facts and fight for his corner against the Minister of the day.
It is not for me to be quite so sympathetic to Sir Richard Marsh because, frankly, I do not know the circumstances. What I do know is that anyone in this House who has had conversations with him in recent years will support me when I say that he has made it absolutely clear that the lack of consistency in Government planning has been one of the greatest bugbears which British Railways have had to face. If we do not tackle this question of the relationship between the Government, this House and the nationalised industries, we shall never give productivity in the nationalised industries a fair crack of the whip.
The Government fail to recognise criticism about the cult of bigness. Nationalisation is the classic way to create this bigness. Many of the ways in which whole regions of the country are thrown into the melting pot have resulted in people holding fears, certainly in the Steel Corporation, about this process. This will increasingly be the case in aerospace and shipbuilding and in the motor industry. We have, almost by definition, to establish a strong centralising authority in the initial stages of nationalising industries. In the way the Government have gone about things, it seems to be well-nigh impossible to remove those centralising shackles. Anyone who talks to people on the shop-floor in the steel industry will become aware of their feeling of remoteness. This stems from the autocratic, centralised relationship which seems to be locked into the Government's approach to the nationalised industries. We hope that the Minister will have some comments upon this aspect today.
I want to strike a constructive note. We must get away from the sterile thinking that has dominated many of our debates. Even now I urge the Government to rethink their policy of futher nationalisation. If they were willing to look in more detail at the proposals for aerospace and shipbuilding, we could see ways in which an economic case could be argued as against the pure principle of nationalisation. However, I am a realist and I recognise the inability of the Government


machine to stop steamrollering over everyone in its path once it begins to roll. At least it might be said that in looking to the future we should urge upon the Government the consideration of a public-private, fifty-fifty type of approach. This works with a number of companies in the steel industry.
With that inter-relationship of public and private capital, it is remarkable how companies prosper. I shall not mention the names of any companies because I fear that by the mere fact of highlighting their lack of problems I may be making them hostages to fortune. The Minister will know the companies in the steel industry to which I refer where this arrangement has had a remarkably good effect in terms of labour relations and profitability, enabling the companies to do a great deal better than others in the same industry.
The Government ought to take a constructive and positive attitude towards our membership of the EEC and encourage and facilitate companies in the nationalised sector which are developing in the European market to go in for more joint ventures so as to become involved in an argument that is not couched purely in terms of State ownership.
The Government's thoughts on profitability have stemmed too much from the emotoinal basis that "profit" is a dirty word. This was something I tried to dispel earlier. On the whole, we should be charitable and try to suspend our judgment today. The Budget is in the offing. We hope that the Government will recognise some of their failures and deal next week with the attack on industry which has so far not only affected the large industries but has particularly affected small businesses.
Although today's debate has been wide-ranging, I regret that we have not had the chance to discuss small businesses in greater detail. In relative terms, the attack on the 800,000 small businesses which employ 500 or fewer people is not as fully appreciated by the public as it might be. It stems very often from what might be regarded as accidental exploitation by Government. It stems from the weight of bureaucracy on small businesses and from the fact that Governments of all parties have tended to assume that every company can deal with paper work as

though it had a head office organisation comparable to ICI.
Governments of all parties must tackle that problem with more vigour. The present Government have a direct and immediate responsibility in matters such as VAT. There is the example of the way in which multi-rate VAT has affected the boat-building industry. This issue has been brought up time and again, and I pay tribute to all hon. Members who have raised it. Multi-rate VAT brings many of the worst features of the purchase tax arrangements back to our system. We hope that the Government's remedy is close to hand. They ought to show some sympathy and understanding.
If the 800,000 small businesses in the country were encouraged, as a result of more profitable activity, to employ just one more person each, many of our unemployment problems would be on the way to being solved. Equally, when we talk about profitability on a wider scale, involving the largest companies, the advance corporation tax arrangement introduced by the Government is a typical example of the way in which they have clobbered business. Having half strangled the patient and put out the eyes of industry, the Government mock industry for its blindness when its profits do not reach international standards.
We now have the Chequers strategy. Despite some of the cynicism, which has been fully justified by recent events, I should like to think that the Minister will be able to assure us that he stands by that strategy and that at least some of what seem to be the sensible and sound criteria to be found within the strategy will be operated in future. It is clear that they have not been brought to bear on problems in the past.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romford brought out most effectively the problems of the motor industry. He speaks with great knowledge of Ford. Many of his constituents work at Ford's. We have an incredible situation whereby the Government announced their Chequers strategy and within a few days went ahead with decisions which effectively mean subsidising competition within the motor industry. Money is being poured into British Leyland. I see today the effect on the pound that the tragic situation there has brought about. At the same time, money is poured into


Chrysler so that it may compete with British Leyland. This reductio ad absurdum would be laughable if it were not so extensive and tragic in terms of the long-term future of our country.
The Government's industrial policies are now in a sad, confused and contradictory state. In many ways they reflect "ad hocery" of the worst sort. I urge the Minister to accept the motion, which does no more than reiterate many of the objectives which the Chequers strategy put forward to the nation. The motion certainly puts forward a constructive approach which has been reflected on all sides today. Let the Government eschew dogma, let them give British industry a chance to thrive. As a start, we look to the Minister to accept the motion, which has been moved with such exemplary skill by my hon. Friend.

1.7 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Industry (Mr. Gerald Kaufman): I join the hon. Member for Arundel (Mr. Marshall) in congratulating his hon. Friend, the Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) on the motion which he has allowed the House to debate today, on the painstaking way in which he has assembled his material and the skilful way in which he presented it. Many of the points the hon. Member for Romford made will be accepted by all hon. Members. At the same time some hon. Members, including my hon. Friends, were right to draw attention to a certain lack of balance in assigning responsibility for our problems.
It is perfectly true that there are shortcomings in our labour relations over far too many areas of British industry. But the problems of British industry, the deep-seated malaise which has been taking effect for decades rather than a few years, would not be remedied if all the shortcomings in labour relations were eliminated and if the inequities of the Price Code alleged by the hon. Gentleman were solved, even by the abolition of the Code itself.
There are very deep-seated problems in British industry, to which we shall be able to turn our attention only when the recession is over. We must use the period of the recession to lay the foundation for

dealing with problems which will remain, even after the intermediate recessional problems are over.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) in his extremely well-documented and constructive speech drew attention to a number of these problems including, in particular, the low level of investment, to which the hon. Member for Nantwich (Mr. Cockcroft) also alluded.
One of the most devastating passages in the Ryder Report on British Leyland—about whose labour relations we have heard a great deal today—was the part, which burned itself upon my mind, pointing out that of £74 million profits, no less than £70 million had been distributed in dividends. If ever there was a two-figure indictment of the previous management of the company, that was it. The Ryder Report made it clear that the existence of the antiquated machinery and equipment on which our cars had to be turned out was due to the shortfall in investment.
Despite all the problems of labour relations, it must be remembered that the workers in Leyland have a magnificent achievement to their credit. They are the biggest exporters in British industry. More than any other workers, they have been making the money, earning the profits and providing the wealth on which so much of our superstructure rests.
The hon. Member for Arundel drew attention to work practices in shipyards, especially in Sunderland. I have recently visited a considerable number of shipyards in connection with my ministerial responsibilities and the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill. In Sunderland I visited Austin and Pickersgill Ltd. and Sunderland Shipbuilders Ltd. The hon. Member should take into account the superb craftsmanship and devotion to work of the workers in that industry and of the Sunderland workers in particular. We shall soon have the Pallion Yard in Sunderland—one of the most modern yards in the world. It will be to the credit of the British shipbuilding industry and will put Sunderland ahead of almost everywhere else in the world. Let us look at the positive aspects as well as the negative ones on which we sometimes tend to dwell too long.
My hon. Friends the Members for Battersea, South (Mr. Perry) and Norwich, South were right to draw attention to one aspect of the inadequacy of British industry to which the Opposition did not refer—the shortcomings of management. Time and again bad labour relations are due to bad management. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) drew attention to this in his constructive speech and he is right to refer to the extremely important role which can be played by the expansion of industrial democracy.
As the hon. Member and others made clear, industrial democracy does not begin and end with workers on the board. I have had 17 meetings with shop stewards from aircraft factories and shipyards in the past few weeks and, of more than 400 shop stewards, only one opposed workers on the board of directors as a solution to our industrial relations problems. Industrial democracy must work up from the roots of British Industry and this is what we shall be seeking in Government amendments to the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill when it returns to the Floor of the House very soon. The amendments, in response to requests from some hon. Friends, will provide the basis for a greater advance of industrial democracy in these industries than has been achieved in any other industry in this country, whether publicly or privately owned.
The hon. Member for Arundel said in an earlier intervention that he had been a great student of the proceedings of the Committee stage of the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill. When we have had 44 sittings which have taken up more than 2,000 columns in Hansard, it is difficult to have read every word, especially when so much of what has been said by the Opposition in order to fill in time has made less than good sense.
It is a great drudgery to read through these Committee proceedings, and I would not blame the hon. Member if he did not see some of the things I said. I acknowledged at a very early stage many criticisms of previous nationalisations, the shortcomings of publicly-owned industries and the need to find new forms of public ownership. The hon. Member referred to the dangers of a centralised bureaucracy running the aircraft and

shipbuilding industries, but I have already given a commitment to introduce on the Bill's Report stage an amendment laying down a decentralised form for these industries.
The chairman of the organising committee for British Shipbuilders has said that his headquarters will be staffed by less than 100 people and the chairman of British Aerospace has made similar remarks.

Mr. Michael Marshall: I am delighted to draw out the Minister on this subject on the Floor of the House, because not everyone reads reports of the proceedings of his Committee as I do. No doubt he will recollect that his distinguished predecessor, Sir Richard Marsh, gave many similar assurances when the steel industry was nationalised. We want very much more clear-cut and cast-iron assurances. We hope the amendments to which he referred will be practical and properly thought through and not just a window-dressing exercise.

Mr. Kaufman: The amendments will provide for the decentralisation of these industries. Ministerial assurances may be excellent, but a legal provision in an Act of Parliament is much better.
The hon. Member for Arundel was helpful in the way he avoided too many references to party differences, but he went a little over the edge when he delivered strictures on the Government over the decision to end Sir Monty Finniston's term as Chairman of the British Steel Corporation. Sir Monty has completed his term within his contract. That did not happen in the case of Lord Hall, who, as Chairman of the Post Office Corporation, was hounded out of his job in mid-contract by the then Conservative Government. That Administration replaced him with Sir William Ryland, whom they now constantly criticise, even though they appointed him to put right the errors that were allegedly taking place under Lord Hall's chairmanship and which they used as the reason for dismissing him in such an undignified way.
I refer to these matters in the happy atmosphere of a Friday only because the hon. Member for Arundel raised them first. He referred to the loss of morale in the steel industry that had been caused by Government interference. The greatest


interference of any Government in a publicly-owned industry in the last 30 years was that of the Conservative Government, which set up a joint steering group to interfere with the development plan of the British Steel Corporation.
For the first time, and, I trust, for the last, a group of civil servants was put together with the British Steel Corporation to trawl over the development plan. That is one reason for the great delay that occurred in the emergence of that plan, and one reason for the tremendous loss of morale in the British Steel Corporation at that time. It is a bit too much for us to accept the accusation made by Conservative Members that we interfered in the activities of the British Steel Corporation when the Conservatives set up this constitutional monstrosity to investigate the activities of the British Steel Corporation—even on one of these happy consensus days.

Mr. Michael Marshall: I do not wish to break up the party spirit, but what the hon. Gentleman said cannot go unchallenged. He will recognise by the same token that I have been arguing a basic precept. When there is interference, problems arise whoever is in Government. The hon. Gentleman has been carrying out much the same process in the closure review that has been sitting for two years without having reached a conclusion about Shotton and Port Talbot.

Mr. Kaufman: There is a difference. When we were debating the constant interference in the British Steel Corporation's activities by the Conservatives when they were in government, my right hon. Friends the present Secretary of State for Employment and the present Secretary of State for Industry moved a motion from the Opposition Front Bench saying that when a Labour Government came to power there would be a closure review. Those words in that motion were transferred almost intact to our February 1974 election manifesto and therefore became an election pledge. If the hon. Gentleman is rebuking us for fulfilling an election pledge, I realise that that does not often happen in the Conservative Party and might therefore be a matter for rebuke.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: Without going into the constitutional implications of a joint study group, will the Minister say

how the setting up of a joint group of members of the British Steel Corporation and civil servants differs from a planning agreement?

Mr. Kaufman: The hon. Gentleman fails to understand the nature of planning agreements. As I do not wish to take up time from the important debate which my hon. Friend the Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) is to introduce, I shall send the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Bottomley) a copy of "The Contents of a Planning Agreement", thousands of copies of which have been distributed to trade unions and others. That document will explain the great difference between fiddling Government interference in a nationalised industry through a joint steering group imposed on that industry and voluntary planning agreements. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South wishes that they were not voluntary, but they are, and that is the policy set forth in the Industry Act 1975.
The hon. Member for Arundel rightly referred to the problems of small firms. I shall not refer to them, but if the hon. Gentleman is around when we get to the Adjournment debate he will have the opportunity of listening to his hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) and myself dilating upon that topic.
The hon. Member for Arundel in his concluding words asked whether I would accept on behalf of the Government the motion moved by his hon. Friend the Member for Romford. I am happy to do so. The hon. Gentleman urges the Government—
to give early evidence of its determination to encourage greater productivity and profitability in industry in the interests of increased investment and expanded opportunities of employment.
I am happy to accept the motion, because the Government have provided such early evidence by a multitude of actions since they came to power.
The motion begins by drawing attention to the present state of British industry. It would be foolish to disguise the fact that there is both a short-term and a long-term problem. As I said, when that short-term problem is overcome, there will be a deep-seated long-term


problem to be dealt with. The performance of British industry is of crucial importance to our overall economic performance. Manufacturing industry alone accounts for some 30 per cent. of GDP and more than 80 per cent. of visible exports.
The long-term problem can be seen from one or two stark facts. One is our persisting balance of payments difficulty. Although we have made great strides in our export performance over the years, the same balance of payments difficulties have repeatedly limited our freedom of manoeuvre and constrained growth during boom years. Another is investment, to which I have already referred.
It is all very well to say that the workers do not produce as much as they should from the equipment they have, but all to often, as the hon. Member for Nantwich (Mr. Cockcroft) said, the equipment is insufficient and too old. Investment per head in manufacturing in Britain has been less than half the level in, for example, Germany or France, for many years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South referred to the "never had it so good" years of Mr. Harold Macmillan. As a one-time opponent of Mr. Macmillan as a parliamentary condidate—when I won a lot of votes—I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate him on the Order of Merit that he has received today. Mr. Macmillan has many virtues to his credit, and he is one of the most estimable political figures of recent generations. At the same time, if I were gathering together his laurels, the attitude of his Government towards deep-seated industrial problems would by no means be assembled among them. Those "never had it so good" years were the locust years for British industry—the years in which our present-day standards of living were fostered while the standards of living of the future were flung away. We shall look back on those years as some of the worst years that led to the foundation of our present appalling economic problems.
Although investment as a proportion of manufacturing output is not greatly different from that in France and Germany, output per head is only half the level elsewhere, and each addition to

our capital stock produces only half as much output as it would in West Germany. That is where the hon. Member for Romford is right. This situation has persisted under a succession of Governments and reflects the poor efficiency with which we use our resources, both of manpower and capital.
I think the House will agree that it is to the credit of the Government that they have grasped the nettle and set in hand the development of a longer-term industrial strategy to tackle these fundamental problems. I assure the hon. Member for Arundel that we fully stand by the industrial strategy which was launched at Chequers five months ago. We do so because only on the basis of that strategy can we begin to deal with these problems.
The short-term problem is, of course, familiar to everyone. We are passing through the deepest world-wide recession since the 1930s, and a major trading nation like ours cannot hope to insulate itself against such events. But it would be fair to say that the situation in industry over the past two years has been aggravated by the inheritance from the previous Government of industrial discord and higher rates of inflation, generated in part by the policies of the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Barber, to whose shortcomings reference has been made.
We, for our part, have done a great deal to enable industry to weather the storm and to encourage investment so that it is better prepared for the coming upturn in world trade and the domestic economy.
By the end of 1974, inflation was having a disastrous effect on company liquidity, and many companies were facing the prospect of bankruptcy. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor, in his Budget of November 1974, gave tax relief on increases in stock values and carried this forward last April. Since then he has indicated that some form of relief will continue and that there will be no general clawback of relief already given. Entitlement to relief is already about £4,000 million, and companies have already improved their cash position by £2,000 million. I do not think that our most hostile critics would deny that this has had a major impact on company post-tax profitability.
Equally, few would deny that reducing the rate of inflation is the single biggest contribution that can be made to improving industry's profitability, confidence, willingness to invest and ability to compete world-wide. I am glad that I did not have to make the contentious point that the Conservative Party did not wish to involve itself one way or the other in this counter-inflation policy. The hon. Member for Rochdale was good enough to say that he voted for it. Some of my hon. Friends voted against it, although the overwhelming majority voted for it. But the Conservative Party could not make up its mind what to do.

Mr. John Garrett: Will my hon. Friend agree that, although it is true that the Government have given capital relief and stock relief, this has not led to any increase in investment? Does he derive from that the fact that it is much less beneficial to industrial investment simply to shower tax reliefs on industry, rather than absolutely specific ones tied to specific investment projects?

Mr. Kaufman: My hon. Friend has made a very important point which may be added to the point made by the hon. Member for Rochdale in his speech—that profits as such are not so important as the manner in which they are made and what is done with them. I accept that fully. I have never been one to challenge the importance of profits, and have pointed out again and again to workers' representatives that it is profitability in both private and publicly-owned industry, that can create the wealth to provide the social services that our party expects to create, but profitability does not necessarily do that unless the profits are used for the right purpose. I drew attention to the two terrifying figures from the Ryder Report about what British Leyland did with its profits, which led to the appalling obsolescence of its equipment.

Mr. Neubert: Does the Minister agree that there is a simpler lesson to be learned from the debate, namely, that there is a very plausible link between productivity and investment? Unless investors can be assured that if they spend their capital—whether from profits or elsewhere—on equipment which allows labour-saving reductions to be made, overmanning levels will be reduced, they

are unlikely to invest, because they will be unable in those circumstances to achieve the return which they should insist upon for themselves and for their shareholders.

Mr. Kaufman: Of course. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South pointed out the importance of dealing with overmanning. I say to the hon. Member for Romford, in no partisan spirit, that one of the great problems in this country is that industry, undermanned or overmanned, has a great burden of non-productive activity to carry on its back. I refer, for example, to the overmanning in local government resulting from the local government reform put through by the Conservative Administration.
Before my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South intervened so tellingly, I was referring to the Government's efforts to deal with the problem of inflation. It must be accepted that although inflation is still far too high our current inflation policy has been markedly successful in bringing down the rate of inflation. This is evidence of our determination to act and not just to pontificate. But we still have a considerable way to go in bringing our rates down as much as we should like. We have some way to go before we bring them down to the level of the best of our competitors, but no one doubts our determination to succeed.
In our White Paper "The Attack on Inflation"—which the Conservative Party could not vote for or against—we recognised that in a mixed economy the investment of the private sector has mainly to be paid for out of profits, and that both public and private industry will need adequate resources if they are to increase investment in the future.
In the White Paper on industrial strategy, to which the hon. Member for Arundel referred, we carried this a stage further by undertaking, in the immediate future, to give priority to industrial development over consumption and even over the Government's social objectives. It was a hard thing to do, but we decided to do it, and I have made clear again and again to political audiences that the cuts in the expenditure programme on social services are necessary in order to make room for the increase in the expenditure


programme on industrial investment, since without an increase in industrial investment and industrial production, the wealth to provide the social services will simply not be there.
We have acted on this. The recent public expenditure White Paper made it clear that public expenditure programmes over the coming years have been framed to leave room for the balance of payments and the resources needed for industrial investment. Moreover,
within total expenditure a higher priority is being given to expenditure which is designed to maintain or improve our industrial capability ".
All this provides generally for greater investment by industry. But we have been extremely active on a selective basis over the past year or so, encouraging investment directly which will increase productivity and profitability, will put us in a better position to respond when world markets pick up, and will provide a firmer foundation for expanded stable employment opportunities.
Since last April we have allocated £120 million to help bring forward capital projects put off because of financial pressures and uncertainty about the future. These projects must be commercially sound and they must make a contribution to improving the balance of payments. So far, we have approved assistance of about £32 million for 27 projects, involving a total investment of nearly £200 million. The great thing about these projects is the amount of further investment they generate.
The projects include expansion of Ransome Hoffman and Pollard's production facilities for ball bearings, a new BP acetic acid plant, a new pharmaceuticals plant for Reckitt and Colman, and an expansion of Lucas CAV's capacity to produce diesel engine fuel injection equipment. The assistance generally will expand job opportunities and is bringing forward investment in machines for the economic upturn. A considerable number of further applications is currently under consideration, which could involve investment of the order of £500 million, and a correspondingly large contribution to the balance of payments.
We have also introduced industry schemes to deal with the problems of

particular sectors. So far, we have allocated £25 million for the ferrous foundry industry, £20 million for the machine tool industry, £20 million for the clothing industry and an extra £3 million for the wool textile scheme.
Other possibilities are coming forward. Among those we are considering are paper and board, printing machinery, and an extension to the ferrous foundries schemes. These schemes are designed to meet the particular needs of the industry. We expect the industry itself to define its requirements clearly, and the problems of its future development. The schemes are therefore tailored to demonstrated needs. For example, the ferrous foundries scheme is aimed at assisting companies to modernise and re-equip to overcome the problems created by historical under-investment, and to improve conditions in these new installations. The machine tools scheme is focused on the development of new products and the rationalisation and improvement of production. The clothing scheme is aimed at improving productivity and efficiency by the introduction of new plant and—in the case of smaller companies—the improvement of internal production arrangements.
I know that the House will accept that these schemes are addressed to the heart of the motion that we are debating today. The Government's new instruments of industrial policy will also have a key rôle to play.
The hon. Member for Woolwich, West referred to planning agreements, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South. These will be concerned particularly about the need for greater productivity, more worthwhile investment, and expanded opportunities for employment. We hope to be able to make a statement shortly about the progress we are making in implementing the system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South referred to the National Enterprise Board. I am rather upset to see that there appears to be some turmoil in the Conservative Party about the NEB. A very senior former employee of the Conservative Central Office is making the most serious allegations about the attitude of the Conservative Party to the Board. He is implying, greatly to my horror and dissatisfaction, that the


Conservative Party is thinking of retaining the NEB, should the day arrive when the Conservative Party returns to power. Of course, it is not for me to get involved in any way in this private grief of the Conservative Party. No doubt Opposition Members will sort out their problems in some way or another.
Meanwhile, we have the National Enterprise Board, and I am very glad to say that it has made a very good start——

Mr. Michael Marshall: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will take it from me, as one of those mentioned in the report, that he should never believe everything that he reads in the newspapers.

Mr. Kaufman: The trouble is that newspapers are Tory newspapers. That is why I do not believe them. The hon. Gentleman is asking me not to believe Tory newspapers. I am happy to do that, on the condition that, when we next have a debate on an industrial topic and he quotes a Tory newspaper as evidence, he will not expect me to take it seriously.
The hon. Member for Woolwich, West appeared to laugh in satisfaction when I said that the NEB had made a very good start. Apart from its widely reported rôle in some consortia for overseas projects, which are extremely important, it has taken an important initiative to prevent erosion of capacity in the machine tool industry, which would otherwise lead to shortages and delays in the supply of machine tools as the economy recovers. In the light of consultation with the Machine Tool Trades Association, it has announced that it is willing to provide finance on commercial terms to companies for building machine tools for stock. This proposal will help employment in the industry and should benefit both the NEB and the companies concerned.
The motion draws attention to the need for greater productivity in industry. In addition to improving our capital base, we must also make better use of our work force. Training can make a major contribution to this. This means both training for the young, as they begin work, and retraining for the not-so-young when their skills become obsolete or redundant—as must inevitably happen in our fast-moving society—to ensure that industry develops and remains up to date.

The Government have put massive resources into this—some £200 million this year, via the Training Services Agency.
We have also allocated £20 million to the Manpower Services Commission to expand training opportunities. This is especially aimed at young people, to make sure they are brought into the labour force with useful skills.
It is vital that all those with skills should use them to the full. This is a matter for good industrial management. It is wasteful both in human and economic terms to do otherwise.
We must also ensure that workers are mobile as between different areas of the country and between declining and expanding industries. But it is important that this should be done in a way that recognises the rights, feelings and needs of those affected. This is the point made by the hon. Member for Rochdale. Workers are no longer to be regarded as pawns to be shifted around the industrial chessboard. The Employment Protection Act helps to enshrine these rights, and the new approach of the Employment Services Agency and its job centres is there to help also. Also, in our approach to manpower we must not forget the importance of job satisfaction, the quality of working life and the right to participate in decision-making.
This is the most important aspect of progress in British industry. Without the right of workers to participate in decision-making rather than, at best, being consulted and, at worst, simply being told, there is no hope for progress in British industry.
I have outlined some of our actions that are aimed at improving industrial performance and coping with the immediate pressing problems of industry. But, unlike our predecessors, we have not lost sight of the longer-term problems of our comparative industrial performance, to which many hon. Members referred, and of the need for a more strategically-planned attack on these problems.
Our approach to this has been based on recognition of the fundamental fact that the responsibility for improving productivity rests largely with management and workpeople on the shop floor. This was reflected in our determination that


the development of a longer-term industrial strategy should take place on a tripartite basis, and this is why we have done this through the NEDC.
The development of this strategy is already well under way. Following the discussions in NEDC in November and January, nearly 40 specialised sector groups are developing five-year strategies for their industries and, as a guide to more immediate action, are identifying what steps can and should be taken by Government, management and unions now to avoid constraints of capacity or manpower in the coming upturn. Early evidence of the willingness of these three parties to take the steps necessary to secure our future will be seen when the reports and recommendations from the first round of discussions are brought together for the NEDC in June.
But the aim of this strategy is basically longer term. It will call for consistent and concerted action over a long period. The Government, for their part, are prepared to frame their industrial policies in accordance with the developing strategy, and to integrate manpower and other economic policies so that they reinforce each other in pursuit of the aims of the strategy.
I have taken the time of the House to outline some of the action that the Government have already taken to pursue the aims set out in the motion and briefly to explain how we are developing our longer-term strategy. Against this background—a record which I claim is impressive within the constraints and within the period in which we have had the opportunity to operate—I congratulate the hon. Member for Romford on his motion, and I have no difficulty in accepting its terms on behalf of the Government, because we are already implementing it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House urges the Government to give early evidence of its determination to encourage greater productivity and profitability in industry in the interests of increased investment and expended opportunities of employment.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

1.47 p.m.

Dr. Edmund Marshall: I beg to move,
That this House reaffirms its belief in the importance of local government, but recognises the need for more widespread acceptance of the principles of local democracy.
The attention of the House now turns from industry, which is one key sector of our national life, to local government, which I consider to be of equally significant importance.
Yesterday was the second anniversary of the reorganisation of local government in England outside Greater London, and perhaps it is opportune now and not too early for the House to consider how the reorganised structure is settling down and how well it is serving the general public.
I shall not venture to comment on the situation inside Greater London, where reorganisation took place more than a decade ago. I hope that some of my hon. Friends who represent the Greater London constituencies will have the good fortune, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to catch your eye in order to fill in that gap in my argument. Nor shall I refer to Wales, where reorganisation was simultaneous with that in the rest of England, or to Scotland, where reorganisation occurred only in May last year. However it may be that some of the general points in our discussion will have relevance to those parts of the Kingdom.
One of the fears expressed widely at the time of reorganisation was that the new authorities would be too remote from the public whom they served. It was considered in some quarters that local democracy would be endangered because decisions would be taken in far-away places by people with little knowledge of the localities affected by those decisions.
It was always my belief—and this remains so after two years of reorganisation—that the strength of local democracy in face of this alleged danger depended completely on the quality and the effectiveness of the local representatives on the new authorities. By comparison with our system of parliamentary representation, it is highly exceptional for any local government ward outside London to have an electorate greater than


one-third of the average parliamentary constituency, and in most cases they are much smaller than that. A councillor has to travel nothing like the distance covered by a non-London Member of Parliament in the course of his parliamentary duties, and if we in this House are expected to be able to maintain effective democratic representation it is proportionately easier for local government representatives to do likewise in their own spheres.
Local government reorganisation drastically reduced the number of local authorities and the total number of councils, but it also introduced new counties which are geographically more compact than the old counties. In some metropolitan districts it brought the administration of important local government services closer than before to many of the public. The threat of remoteness in local government was present before reorganisation, and while the picture certainly varies greatly from one part of the country to another it is a threat which can be completely offset by councillors who have the political skill and who are, above all, energetic in keeping closely in touch with those whom they represent.
A great deal therefore depends on the calibre of the members elected to the new local authorities. This can be amply demonstrated by the situation in my constituency, which is in the unusual position of overlapping no fewer than four of the new counties, two of them metropolitan and two of them shire counties. In each of these counties there is a district council which covers parts of my constituency. Therefore, whereas before local government reorganisation six local authorities were serving my constituents, after reorganisation that number grew to eight.
In the reorganised structure where there are good councillors who attend to their duties conscientiously, holding well-advertised and regular "clinics", the public are tending to get good service from the new authorities. The people can have confidence in their democratic representatives. In other areas, however, there are councillors who seem to think that all that is required of them is to attend council and committee meetings, and they make no attempt to contact the public in their wards.
Consequently the average citizen in these areas can be unaware of the identity of his councillors even if they happen to live just around the corner. He has little idea of where to turn if he is confronted with a problem relating to the local authority. He might endeavour to make inquiries at the council offices, and that can mean a considerable journey, particularly at county level. If he gets no satisfaction from the officials, as is sometimes the case, his next move generally is to the Member of Parliament, however much his problem is entirely within the discretion and jurisdiction of the local authority and not of the national Government.
At my own regular surgeries and in my constituency correspondence, I now find that I receive far fewer complaints relating to local government in the areas where there are effective councillors than in others where the councillors might as well be non-existent as far as the public are concerned. Very often when a constituent raises with me a local authority problem and I ask whether he has contacted his local councillors, he is surprised when I tell him who the councillors are, because he may well know them as people but is unaware of their public rôle. There seems to be a greater failure of communication with the electorate in this respect in those areas where a lot of the councillors are independents.
The problem of the non-availability of the councillor presents the greatest difficulties in the shire counties at county level. There, education and the personal social services are county functions and people need to be able to get in touch easily with their personal representatives, but the wards may well be large and scattered, particularly in rural areas. Public confusion about the two tiers of local government is markedly greater in the shire counties than in the metropolitan counties. Whatever may be the quality of different local councillors, it is important that we in this House should reassert that the public must realise and accept that the responsibility for discharging local government functions rests with those councillors.
A moment ago I referred to my practice of telling constituents who bring local authority problems to my attention that they should take them to their councillors. I know that many hon. Members, on both


sides, take a different view from that and are ready to take up local authority problems on behalf of constituents by writing direct to local authority officials themselves. I suggest, however, that we should all think very carefully about that situation. It seems that every time a Member of Parliament takes up a purely local government problem he is helping to undermine the rightful position of the appropriate local authority representative and indirectly is undermining the authority of local government as a whole.
If local government is to be controlled locally, we must accept the democratic authority of local representatives without undue interference from "Big Brothers", whether they come from Whitehall or from this House. There is a widespread misunderstanding of the proper role of local government in this respect. Perhaps a large section of the public is genuinely unable to distinguish between national and local government responsibilities. However, there is at least as large a section which seems to think that local government is in all respects subordinate to national Government and Parliament and that on all questions on which a local authority has jurisdiction there is some right of appeal to Westminster and Whitehall.
At a public meeting in my constituency I was told by a member of the teaching profession that he regarded local councillors as the equivalent of prefects in the school of public life. The adult staff of the "school" were Members of Parliament and Government Ministers. I have found that same mistaken attitude among many other people in the community who ought to know better, including solicitors, members of parish councils and even, curiously enough, some members of principal authorities. This attitude fails to grasp the real significance of local government—namely, that decisions reached democratically by local authorities, within the proper exercise of their powers, are generally final and that people must accept the position of the local authority in those matters.
Equally, there are people who accept the constitutional independence of local authorities but who still seem to think that Members of Parliamen have more influence—" influence "is a very general

term—than local councillors with those local authorities. I have even heard it said that, while people will accept local authority decisions as final, they still regard their Member of Parliament as having more weight than a local councillor in making representations to influence those decisions. Sometimes they believe that a letter from an MP is more likely to ginger up the officials in the council offices than an inquiry from a councillor.
The validity of that attitude varies according to the capabilities of councillors and the different practices of different authorities. I regret that it is often true that local government officials will take more notice of a Member of Parliament than of an elected member of their own authority. Wherever that situation exists, I believe it to be bad for local democracy. I am not suggesting that local government officials should always ignore legitimate inquiries from Members of this House, but I contend that all local government officials should give at least as good a service to their local councillors as to anybody else.
That leads to the whole question of the relationship betwen officials and elected representatives in local government. Over the years, many local government officials have acted in the belief that they ran the local authorities while councillors were people who came and went and were generally to be regarded as nuisances to be tolerated to provide the semblance of democracy. After careful consideration, I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that before reorganisation a few of the clerks and chief officers of the smaller authorities acted as little tin gods in the place of their authorities.

Mr. Cyril Smith: Not only the small authorities.

Dr. Marshall: Reorganisation may have helped to reduce the likelihood of that kind of situation, but it has created other dangers which now put the elected councillor at a disadvantage compared with the full-time officials of his council. The size and complexity of some of the new authorities make it difficult for part-time councillors to be as well informed as the full-time officials about the business of their councils. Furthermore, the widespread application of the recommendations of the Bains Report has in one


form or another taken more of the day-to-day decisions in the administration of local government away from elected councillors.
An inexperienced councillor may now have as much difficulty as a member of the public in pursuing the details of a personal problem through the administrative framework of the new authorities. I believe that senior local government officials should be more ready to accept personal inquiries from councillors and spedily to obtain helpful replies for them. Every person in local government service must, in the interests of local democracy, accept that his authority is run by the councillors, not the officials. That same principle also needs to be accepted by large sections of the public.
However, one may then ask whether councillors elected to many of our larger local authorities, particularly county and metropolitan district councils, are now in any position to exercise their full responsibilities for running those authorities. They are elected on a part-time basis, as I have indicated. Many of them have to take considerable time off from full-time employment to attend to their public duties. Often that is employment which they dare not relinquish as a whole but in which they have probably sacrificed the prospects of promotion because of their public service.
This problem has certainly grown since reorganisation, and it has hardly been offset by the provision of attendance allowances for councillors engaged on local authority business. The way in which the monthly payments of allowances to councillors are regularly tabulated, like league tables, in many newspapers—whose motives are not always beyond question—is detrimental to the whole cause of local democracy. The way in which it is snidely put across that members who claim the largest expenses are somehow not playing the game right is wrong and harmful to the whole situation in local government. If local democracy has any value for us at all—many Press men are the first to champion the cause of democracy—we must be prepared to pay for that democracy in money terms and to regard the remuneration of local representatives as normal practice.
However, I do not think that anybody can expect effective democratic representation

to operate in county and metropolitan district councils on the part-time basis that we now have. I have no doubt that members of county and metropolitan district councils should be regarded as full-time councillors if they are to do their job properly and should be paid a full-time salary. That may mean fewer councillors, because we probably could not afford as many as we now have.
That being so, I suggest that a system of single-member wards at district level should be applied wherever practicable. I cannot understand the advantage of the system of three-member wards in metropolitan districts, except that it enables local elections to be held in every ward every year. I believe that such multiple representation serves only to confuse the public even further about the identities of their councillors.
As in Parliament and county councils, a system of full-time metropolitan district councillors with single-member wards would be more conducive to effective local democracy. If the general public more widely accepted the key role of councillors in local government, not only would they make more use of those councillors but there would be greater interest in local elections.
As we approach the district council elections throughout England, outside Greater London, in five weeks' time, it is opportune to remind the public that here is the opportunity for local democracy to come alive. As we all know, local elections are too often ignored by a majority of the public, by people who, when local problems later arise, resort to action groups, to residents' and ratepayers' associations, in an attempt to air their complaints. This is the time, as the local elections approach, for the constitutional representations to be made through the existing councillors and the prospective candidates in local government.
The only people who can be rightly regarded as public representatives in local government are the duly elected councillors. No local pressure groups of any kind can ever claim to represent the general public in the same way as councillors. Ratepayers' associations come in all shapes and forms but generally I find that they are all misnamed, since it is


the councillor who has the unique right to represent the ratepayer in local government. The active members of a ratepayers' association generally speak for no one but themselves.
The ratepayers' associations have become more numerous and more active in the last two years as the result of the nation-wide disquiet with the whole system of local government finance. I do not wish in this debate to embark on a discussion of the present rating system—we have had that many times in this House already—or of possible alternatives to it. In any case, the all-important report of the Layfield Committee is still awaiting publication.
However, for the purposes of our debate today I believe that it is very important for local democracy that local authorities should, as far as possible, be self-financing and able to raise sufficient funds through the revenue powers legally accorded to them to meet their own expenditure in total. The present rate support grant system, with all its complexity, has harmed local democracy in that it has blurred the distinction between national and local government responsibilities for financial matters, and it has distorted the principle of the piper and the tune. Whatever system of local government finance may be devised in the future, I hope that it will be possible for local authorities to stand on their own financial feet, beholden to no national paymaster and able to govern locally in the best interests of their electors.

Mr. John Cartwright: Is my hon. Friend arguing that each individual local authority ought to stand on its own feet? If he is, how does he face the situation, which some of us know only too well, of the local authority with a very low level of income which usually has the major problems that require high levels of spending?

Dr. Marshall: I accept that point in so far as that will depend on whatever system of income is devised, but in all cases I would accept that there would be some authorities which are more wealthily endowed than others, and that in such situations there would have to be some kind of national equalisation fund; but

I would not wish it to go further than that.

Mr. Cyril Smith: They have to stand on one and a half of their feet.

Dr. Marshall: That may be a lot better than at the present, when they may have only little toes to stand on.
Perhaps I may attempt to draw together my remarks. I believe that local government needs to be truly local, truly democratic and exercised with a strong social conscience. All our policies and suggestions for change in local government have to be tested in the light of those three general objectives. I do not believe at present that those objectives are sufficiently recognised, in the first place by the general public but also by many local government officials and some local party-political leaders, and even perhaps by some Members of this House and by some of the policy-makers in Government Departments.
The key person in local government in all respects must be the councillor, and his position needs to be strengthened in the interests of local democracy. The present financial system in local government needs radical replacement by some new system which will enable a much greater degree of local financial independence within the constraints of democracy. Given improvements along those general lines, I believe that local government can be made much more healthy and strong than it is at present, that it can be brought into greater public esteem and that it can serve the whole local community more effectively.

2.16 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Smith: I confess, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that in the hope of being fortunate enough to catch your eye, as I have been, I have been looking around the Benches and wondering whether I ought to deliver my remarks from the Opposition Front Bench and the Dispatch Box. I find it very strange that on a major item about a major subject—local government—the official Opposition are unable to have a representative on their Front Bench, at least to take an interest in the debate if not a part in it. Perhaps, therefore, as I am the only Member on the Opposition Benches this afternoon, I should make it clear that I speak from the Liberal


Bench and not on behalf of Conservative Members. Indeed, perhaps their absence is not surprising when we are debating the matter of local government. Realising that they are responsible for the reorganisation of local government and all that has taken place as a consequence, perhaps they would have red faces if they were here this afternoon to take part in a debate about the present state of local government. Perhaps to that extent their absence can be excused.
I should like to compliment the hon. Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) on raising the matter and on the motion that he has moved. I regret that I cannot agree with everything he said. I imagine that that will not surprise him. However, I strongly support the substance and the terms of the motion. Indeed, I could not but help thinking that perhaps the hon. Gentleman's past training, as opposed to his present experience, has helped him in some way towards drafting the motion, as against the speech that he made in support of it.
I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman that local government! must be truly local and truly democratic. I cannot go along with him entirely on his views about local councillors. For example, it is easy to be critical of the councillor who does not play as large a part as another does in dealing with constituents' problems. I speak as someone who served for 23 years as a member of a local authority. It is easy to be critical. Different councillors pursue their interests in local government in different ways, just as different Members of Parliament pursue their interests in national Government in different ways. I have known some town councillors who have made little contribution to the town as a whole but a great contribution to their ward, and others who have made an excellent contribution to the affairs of the town as a whole but little to those of their ward. We are all different individuals, and to that extent our contributions will vary, and we ought not necessarily to place more importance on or give greater credit to one kind of service as opposed to another.
I take the view that a councillor is a key man in local government, but I do not think he is a key man as opposed to officials. I have always looked upon local government as being a team of people

comprised of both officials and councillors, with neither being superior to the other, be it the official superior to the councillor, or vice versa. In my experience in local government, I always tried to ensure that I worked with officers rather than that officers worked for me, or that I worked for them. I always took the view that my principal job was to try to evolve policy and that the job of the officer, within broad lines, was to implement that policy. One accepts that there is overlapping between the two and that on occasions it is not clear who is determining policy, who is administering it, and so on.
I do not agree with the hon. Member for Goole about employing full-time councillors. I am not sure whether the payment of councillors is a good thing. I have some reservations about it. I have always passionately believed that no man or woman should be debarred from serving on a council for economic reasons. Every man and woman should have the right to serve on a local authority and I compliment the Government for having introduced that right in the Protection of Employment Act. Equally, it is right that if such a person loses money from serving on a council he or she should be able to recoup that loss without question or publication. But if such a person is drawing an allowance for attendance, I am not sure that I feel the same about the publication of that allowance as does the hon. Member for Goole.
Perhaps there are subtleties about the way in which allowances are published in some newspapers, but it is not improper for members of the public to be aware of what they are paying to the public people who serve them. That is why I strongly supported the Register of Interests of hon. Members. I have declared all my sources of income, and it would not worry me if I also had to disclose the amounts I received from those sources. When we enter public life we know the conditions. No one makes a person stand for membership of a council or for membership of this House. Once elected, a person should not be afraid to be subjected to public scrutiny if it is proper and does not involve his private and personal life.
I do not know how the hon. Member's proposal for one-member wards would lead to the extension of the principles of


local democracy. If one reduces the number of public representatives, as the hon. Member advocated, one may reduce the amount of public democracy rather than increase it. I do not understand the logic of the hon. Member's argument, or how it ties up with his motion.
One of the major problems of local government—or government which is more directly concerned with local populations—is that it is being taken further away from the people rather than being brought to them. I have grave reservations about local boards, such as health and water boards, which are selected rather than elected. I hope that the Government will find it possible, in the space of their life to democratise bodies such as health and water boards and to bring them under some form of elected representation, rather than selected representation. Some of us would go further and abolish the county council structure. We would devolve more powers from Westminster and create a system of local government, which would include water and health boards.
The reorganisation of local government was brought about by a Tory Government, and they should never be allowed off the hook. Reorganisation has not been a happy experience. There has been a vast waste of public money as a result of it, or perhaps it would be better to say that it has not prevented a vast waste of public money. Before reorganisation there were 1,390 councils and now there are 422, but the staffs employed by them have increased by 110,000.
One of the problems, not only of local government but of the whole British economy, is that we are becoming over-administered. It is time seriously to assess how we use the manpower available and consider early retirement for men, and a reduction in the working week. Making better use of the labour available and giving people more leisure is perhaps the way to solve our unemployment problem

Mr. Russell Kerr: All hon. Members will be disturbed by the staffing figures that the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) has quoted. Some of us would be even more disturbed if he could tell us how much ratepayers will have to pay of the total emoluments drawn by certain councillors.

Mr. Smith: I cannot divide up the figures, but in 1960 local authority spending was £1,715 million, whereas this year it is £10,600 million. I do not know how much of that sum is for emoluments and how much is for other things.
There are interesting examples of the sort of salaries being paid in local government. I am not sure whether it is fair to quote the figures for local authorities without knowing all the facts, but at first glance they make interesting reading. For instance, Barnet Council has advertised for a secretary at £4,000 plus. Islington is offering £8,000 a year for a chief Press officer to head a team of 16. Waltham Forest has the following hierarchy dealing with committees—four assistant committee secretaries, four committee secretaries, four senior committee secretaries, two principals, one chief committee secretary, one assistant borough secretary and one borough solicitor and secretary. That makes me wonder what it is all about, and what the reorganisation of local government has been about.
There are one or two exceptions. Liverpool, which has had a strong Liberal influence since reorganisation, has reduced its rates, reduced the size of the housing waiting list, increased its grants to voluntary organisations, and encouraged the full use of its schools by the community. Adur, in Sussex, which has Liberal government, has reduced its rates and reduced the number of its staff.
Those are exceptions. I suspect that the Minister could say things about those authorities which would put them in a less favourable light. Because of their freshness of approach they have been able to do things that other authorities which were merely the result of the take-over of a previous authority, could not do.
The great problem of local government is public apathy. Council elections, with turn-outs of less than 20 per cent., must cause anxiety to people who are deeply concerned about the future of democracy and people's right to express themselves in a proper democratic way. The way to turn the tide and bring back interest in local government is not to use some of the methods suggested by the hon. Member for Goole, such as full-time councillors and one-ward councils, but to return power to the people, and that can be done only by breaking local government down to its smallest units instead of trying


to build it up into its largest units, which has been the tendency over the past 10 to 20 years.
The motion talks of the need for more local democracy. We must ensure that bodies that administer services for the public—I refer again to health and water authorities—are elected and answerable to the people. When they are answerable, it is no good if they are so remote that the people to whom they are answerable are not even aware that they exist. They must be economically viable, but close enough to the people for the people to feel that they have an interest in them. It is vital for democracy that we look at local government again and create a system that people feel cares for them and about them.

2.32 p.m.

Mr. John Cartwright: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) on having chosen this subject. Those of us who had local government experience before we entered the House often feel that our colleagues without that good fortune and privilege do not always understand or appreciate the problems of local government. That feeling was reinforced this afternoon, because as soon as the magic words "local government" were heard in the Chamber there was a mass exodus of the four Conservative Members who were present, who almost did themselves an injury in their anxiety to get out of the Chamber before the debate began.
My hon. Friend has invited the House to reaffirm its belief in the importance of local government. As the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) pointed out, the absence of any representative of the Conservative Party leads us to believe that the Conservatives are showing not their belief in the importance of local government but their complete contempt for local government. It is strange that we have no Opposition Front Bench speaker present, not even the self-appointed Prime Minister of London, after all the attacks from the Opposition Benches in the past year or so on local authority spending.
Both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Rochdale have commented on the complexities of local government and the fact that ordinary people no longer

identify with it, either because it has been removed further and further from them or because they do not understand what is now in many areas a very complex system. I take the Inner London situation as an example. Most people do not appreciate what powers are exercised by the borough councils, what powers are exercised by the Greater London Council, what the rôle of the Inner London Education Authority is, how the Metropolitan Police are administered, where the Thames Water Authority comes into the picture or what the area health authority does. It is a great mass of bureaucracy which the ordinary electors do not begin to understand. Moreover, the Metropolitan Police, the water authority and the health authority are no longer subject to any genuine democratic control.
All these various agencies and bodies pursue their separate plans, with little attempt to interlock one with another, although decisions taken by, for example, the water authority can have a major impact on local government. There is a massive shuffling of paper from one tier of local government to another and from one authority to another, with large numbers of staff monitoring what other parts of local government are doing. There is a duplication of responsibility. People with local government experience elsewhere come to London and do not understand why borough councils are housing authorities when the GLC is a housing authority. They do not understand why both the boroughs and the GLC operate parks, why they are both highway authorities and why both engage in support for the arts. There is tremendous duplication and overlapping of powers and responsibilities in London local government.
I am making no direct or indirect attack on the GLC, but it is hard to understand a situation which the GLC, the alleged strategic authority for Greater London, is messing about mending council tenants' back fences and trying, often very badly, to put washers on taps in hundreds of thousands of council homes. There is a terrible blurring of responsibility. The GLC's rôle as strategic authority is not being carried out because of the confusion with all its other, much more local, responsibilities.
What we want is not so much reorganisation of local government—although the


message I receive from many parts of the country outside London is that less than two years' experience of reorganised local government does not encourage many people in local authorities to continue with it in its present form. There is an increasing demand for a rethink about the system bequeathed to us by the Conservatives, but I do not think that the elector is so encouraged by the slogan of reorganisation. I think that he would be encouraged by a slogan of simplification of local government.
Although it is not our job to debate devolution today, I believe that many people would accept a regional tier of government, taking into democratic control the ad hoc water and health authorities and many other ad hoc non-elected bodies, a regional tier covering land use planning and many other responsibilities, such as industrial location, on a much wider basis than the metropolitan or shire counties now do.
But if we had a regional tier most of us would say that there was no case for three tiers of local government, no case for a regional tier, a county tier and a district tier. Most of us would argue that the logical approach was to have a regional level and below that a level of most-purpose district authorities providing the personal and local services that the average elector looks to his town hall to provide.
That is the pattern towards which we should work. I accept that it cannot be done overnight and that there would probably be a revolt in many places if we tried to reorganise local government again very quickly, but we should know where we are trying to go, and that is the sort of pattern that attracts most people.
Perhaps I may in passing take a sideswipe at the City of London. I hope that it will not be too long before a Labour Government take their courage in both hands and decide to do away with the nonsense of having a totally separate local government unit for 5,000 or so residents of the City of London.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Rather fewer.

Mr. Cartwright: I believe that there are rather fewer actual residents, but there are about 8,500 business voters,
My hon. Friend the Member for Goole commented on the responsibilities of councillors. He said that they are, as it were, the linchpin of the democratic local government process. I expect that my hon. Friend accepts that councillors have had a brutal Press over the past two years or so. Perhaps the lower level of rate increases this spring will mean that councillor-bashing will not be conducted at quite such a high level and as severely as at this time last year. However, it is still continuing at a high level in some areas.
I agree with the hon. Member for Rochdale that matters such as the attendance allowance system have done a great deal to exacerbate bad feeling towards local authority members. It seems that that system has combined the maximum annoyance to ratepayers with the minimum of recompense for local authority members who have suffered financial loss.
That system has allowed a small minority to claim quite substantial sums when they may not have suffered any real loss of income. But we now have a situation in which many people are substantially worse off even after they have received their attendance allowance, the allowance being taxable. That is because we have not ensured that the allowance keeps pace with the rate of inflation.
I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment established a working party last year to examine the system. He has been remarkable coy about revealing the results of its inquiry. I understand that there are difficulties, but in fairness to our colleagues in local government it is important that something clear-cut is said before too long about the future of the attendance allowance system. I very much hope that the Government will return to a system of fair, adequate and proper compensation for loss of income rather than continue with the system which has existed for the past two years.
I must disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Goole if he suggests that we should have full-time councillors. That is a negation of the idea that local government should enable local people to elect their neighbours to represent them on local authorities. Once we elect local full-time politicians, we depart from that principle.

Dr. Edmund Marshall: Is my hon. Friend in disagreement with the idea of remunerating Members of Parliament?

Mr. Cartwright: That is a different situation. The electorate seeks to elect full-time Members of Parliament, although it is not always successful in doing so. There are Members who manage to do very well in other spheres of activity in addition to their parliamentary duties. However, for local government we look to those who have solid and substantial roots in the community, those who share the experience of their neighbours and who are in a strong position to administer local services.
I agree with my hon. Friend that the councillor plays an important rôle in guaranteeing and safeguarding local democracy, but I believe that there is a rôle for a stronger element of public participation and involvement in the administration of local authorities. Some interesting experiments in neighbourhood councils have taken place in the past few years. However, I do not want to see a statutory framework of neighbourhood councils at this stage. If such a framework were established, it might suck neighbourhood councils into local govenment bureaucracy and change their whole nature.
If we had a statutory layer or level of neighbourhood councils in the present system, we might place the district councils in an uncomfortable sandwich, a position in which they were sat upon from above by the counties and pushed from below by the neighbourhood councils. There is not necessarily a case for a statutory level of neighbourhood councils, but it is that sort of voluntary involvement in local services that is of great importance.
We should be encouraging local authorities to get more public participation. For example, we should be encouraging joint management schemes on council estates so that council tenants are involved in managing and running their estates. We should be encouraging pensioners and those drawing benefits from social service departments to be involved in monitoring these services and to feed back information to the authorities about the services that are provided. We should experiment in many ways with the wider involvement of the public in local authority

affairs. Such involvement would be to the good of local government. It would strengthen its democratic base rather than weaken it.
I turn briefly to another factor which is uppermost in the minds of all those who are engaged in the running of local authorities—namely, the immediate financial prospects. We should recognise the way in which local councillors have come to terms with what has been an abrupt change in the financial climate. They have succeeded in reducing what in some areas were high levels of real growth. There were growth rates of 10 per cent. in some services in some areas. They have now been brought back to virtually a standstill situation.
We should recognise that that has involved some tough decisions being made by local authority members who ran for office and who were elected to improve services in their areas. Many were elected on that basis, and it was their whole compulsion and involvement in local government. They have had to accept voluntarily a standstill situation. They have made a considerable contribution towards solving the nation's economic problems.
In some areas the cut-back has led to considerable difficulties. For example, in my constituency there is the Thames-mead new town. Londoners move into the area from all over the Greater London area. They expect a certain level of provision of social services, recreational facilities and all the other local services. As a local authority, it is not so easy for us to say "We are sorry, we cannot provide the services for which you are looking as we are in a nil growth situation".
Nor is it easy to cut back on services in other areas of local government expenditure so as to generate the resources that are needed to meet a large incoming community. We must recognise that, even though the Government are saying that there must be nil growth overall, there are still areas in which central Government decisions are generating a demand for more and more local government staff. The chronically sick and disabled persons legislation, the safety and health at work legislation and consumer credit legislation, for example, have placed upon local government in the past couple of years additional burdens which


have yet to have an impact on staffing levels.
We should pay tribute to the way in which local government has faced some tough decisions on local priorities in the changed financial situation. The motion calls for a recognition of the need for more widespread acceptance of local democracy. The relationship between local authorities and central Government is of great importance. There is a tendency for all political parties in Opposition to say that they believe in local democracy, in giving more power to local government and in making Whitehall interfere to a lesser extent. When, however, a former Opposition party takes office, it finds for a number of reasons that it must introduce more and more Whitehall interference in what actually happens in local town halls. That is particularly true regarding central Government finance.
On the other hand, I tend to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Goole when he implies that a high level of central Government financial support for local authorities undermines their financial democracy and independence. I do not think it desperately matters whether rate support grant is at 65 per cent. of local council spending, 70 per cent. or 75 per cent. as long as it is on a block grant basis and the local authority has complete freedom to decide how it will allocate the money.
What interferes with local Government autonomy is the indivdual financial control of things like the housing cost yardstick which some of us in this Chamber suffer from year after year and things like the loans sanction, when one has to go to the Department and argue about an individual project. There is a case for rather less detail of this sort. In the sphere of housing, priorities vary a great deal from one local authority area to another depending on circumstances. I cannot see why we should not be looking at the possibility of making a block allocation to housing authorities, leaving them to decide their priorities on new constructon, rehabilitation of existing property or loans for house purchase. I should like to see local priorities and local decisions taken where resources of that sort are allocated.
Looking at the terms of the motion before us. I agree that the state of local

authorities in England is perhaps rather better than some of us might have expected this time last year. They have come to terms well with the sudden slamming on of the financial brakes. Despite all the attacks made on local authorities, not least in this House, we still find that ordinary people are willing to come forward to serve their fellow men in communities on local authorities. The importance of local government is one of the major foundations of our democratic structure.

2.52 p.m.

Mrs. Millie Miller: As I gaze at the now completely empty Opposition Benches I recall the echoes of a day or two ago when they were filled with hon. Members braying over and over again for cuts in public expenditure, not least in local government. Now that the opportunity arises for them to discuss the problems and the nature of local government, they find they have commitments elsewhere and cannot be with us to support local government along the lines that my hon. Friend the Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) has done in his motion today.
I am sympathetic to the wording of the motion but doubtful about the terms in which my hon. Friend proposed it to the House. My hon. Friend, the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) and I have shared the experience of service in inner London local government. We shared the experience of membership of the London Boroughs Association and of the Association of Municipal Corporations, right up until the time when we were elected to this House. Our interpretation both of the motivation of people entering local government and of the drive behind the whole machinery of local government is a quite different one from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Goole, possibly because he comes from an area outside London, where life may well be more leisurely and pressures not so great.
I shall follow on from where my hon. Friend left off, on the whole question of the approach to local government, and say, as I have said before in this House, that the atmosphere between central and local government has improved in particular since this present Government set up the Consultative Council for Local Government Finance. I am very much


aware, from the heart-rending experiences which the AMC suffered under the previous Conservative Government, who were driving us nearer and nearer to making local government part of a corporate State, that this exchange of views, knowledge and experience between central and local government has in many ways been responsible for the reduction in tension that has allowed local government to make its own decisions when the need to restrict public expenditure came about.
Having been in local government since 1945 and experiencing the ups and downs of changes of successive Governments throughout that time, I know only too well how a change of political control can upset the ambitions of local government to make the services in their area the best that they can offer. It is depressing and frustrating to know that one's plans to make conditions better, particularly for the most disadvantaged in local authority areas, are to be held back because national expenditure on local government matters has gone out of fashion for the time being.
This means that where central Government is imposing restrictions it is coming up against the heartfelt wishes of people who have submitted themselves for election in their areas to produce better and better conditions. Now, local authorities are having to restrict their wishes. We are also in a post-reorganisation position. I say feelingly that reorganisation in the rest of the country has generally followed the pattern in the Greater London area.
I want to follow up the points made by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith), who has temporarily left the Chamber, and say how strongly I support his view that local government units should be smaller, not larger, with more representatives and not fewer. I say that from the experience of having served for a number of years on the second smallest of the metropolitan boroughs of London, where the electorate was about 50,000 and the number of elected members was small, but could, because of its local roots, keep in touch with the electorate.
Local people expected to know their local councillors, and it was possible for them to know them. It was also possible for almost anybody who was elected to walk to the town hall instead of having

to travel for a considerable distance to reach it. It was not very difficult to get to the seat of local government, and women, particularly young women with families, were not completely precluded from taking part in local authority work.
My hon. Friend seems to have been infected by the reasons that were given for the reorganisation of London government or local government in the rest of the country. He has fallen into the trap of thinking that if one has fewer members they will be of better calibre. The original proposal put forward by the Herbert Committee on London Local Government was that if we reduced numbers to a third we therefore made them better. This was advanced 10 years later, in the reorganisation for the rest of the country.

Dr. Edmund Marshall: I did not make myself clear. I was not suggesting that we might have to consider reducing the number of members of metropolitan district councils if we paid them a full-time salary, but that if there was such a reduction it was not necessary to reduce them to a third of their present number, because one could also, by having single-member wards, have smaller wards.

Mrs. Miller: That might be a practical possibility. Since I do not follow my hon. Friend in advocating full-time paid councillors, it becomes irrelevant. I agree so much with my hon. Friend the Membr for Woolwich, East that the essence of local government is that it is composed of people who, in their spare time, are concerned with serving their community. This country is fortunate in the amount of voluntary service that is given over a wide range of activities, not merely in local government but in the tremendous number of voluntary societies which, in their way, are providing part of a local government service.
The method of electing councillors and keeping them in touch with their neighbours and with local problems at the same time as they are occupied outside their authority or within it, as working people, has a great deal to commend it. The tragedy of local government in the post-war years has been that there have been two sessions of reorganisation. The first was in the early 1960s, when the


Conservatives determined to destroy the London County Council by reorganising the London area.
All the machinery was set in motion, all of the plans for reorganisation were made, when there was a change of Government. In 1964 it fell to a Labour Government to pick up the machinery that the Tories had introduced and try to make it work. All these years later there are still problems within the London boroughs. Most of those boroughs are breaking down their organisations into small district organisations to try to overcome the problems forced on them by reorganisation. Ten years later the same thing happened again. Without investigating in any way the results of their reorganisation in Greater London, the Tories decided to embark on reorganisation in the rest of the country. They reintroduced a system that was severely criticised in local government and by Labour Members.
Having done so, the Tories lost the next election and Labour was left, once again, to administer a system with which it disagreed—not only in local government but in the health and water services. Both of these latter services should be democratically administered by those elected to serve an area. The greatest benefit that can come from our encouragement of local government would arise if we asked the Government, bearing in mind the upheaval that has already been caused, carefully to monitor the ways in which both reorganisations have worked out and the ways in which reasons advanced for the reorganisations have worked out in practice. When a reasonable time has elapsed—I hope it will not be too long—the Government should come forward with proposals that will encourage people to stand for local government office, which will encourage the kind of greater independence that has already been referred to, particularly in respect of local authorities financing their services.
I hope that when the Layfield Report is received it will contain ideas that will relieve the rating system in some way, without necessarily abolishing it, and will enable local government to finance itself by methods other than the rating system. I hope that by these methods, by Government help on a block basis, locally

elected members can make their own choices for their areas. In that way I believe we shall see an increasing interest among those who stand for local government office.
That alone will not be enough; we have also got to get the Government to spread the message that local government is an integral part of the government of the country, albeit at a local level. We must help encourage more people to understand the services—I agree that they do so only rarely—so that they will not only want to see their locally elected representatives, but will want to take part, by voting, in the machinery of local government.

3.5 p.m.

Mr. Tony Durant: I intervene with some trepidation, because I understand I am the only hon. Member on the Conservative Benches to have been present during this debate. I apologise for missing the opening, but I have been at a meeting with the chief executive of my local council, so perhaps that qualifies me to take part in this discussion. This is a subject on which I have a debate myself next week. I shall then be concentrating on local government finance, but today I can have a dry run.
Planning is one of the key parts of local government. I do not think we spend sufficient time considering its overall impact on society. The local government reorganisation attempted to make clear which levels of local government would deal with planning matters, but the situation became confused and there is now overlapping between district and county councils, which both deal with planning matters on quite a large scale. Any future look at local government must define clearly the division between the powers of these councils.
We should also think more about regional planning, not just housing estates but transport, jobs, factories, housing and the whole environment, so that we have a system that is more viable than the present hotch-potch that exists in many areas.
Many planners spend too much time in their offices and not enough time out and about. It is easy for planners to say that a bad area has bad housing—though they do not know what that means—and that therefore it should be knocked down and


rebuilt, with the residents being put back in the new properties. Someone will then suggest that access will be needed to the new development and the planners will decide to drive a road through the area. They forget that, in that area, there are human beings who will suddenly find their environment broken and smashed and the society which they have got used to—the pubs and the shops—taken away.
When I watch the programme "Coronation Street" on television, in the opening sequence the camera starts off at the top of high-rise flats and moves down to Coronation Street. I sometimes wonder whether the people in Coronation Streets are not happier than those in the smart high-rise flats. At least they know each other, and have an environment worth living in. Planners sometimes forget that the net product of planning is human beings and homes. We are too fond of creating concrete jungles that leave people without the things they need, including the pubs and the shops. I am living through this in my own constituency, which is perhaps why I feel so strongly about it.
I am sorry that I missed the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall). I understand he talked about the need for fewer councillors. He may be on the right lines. At the moment, there are so many councillors, particularly in district councils, that a number of them get frustrated because they have no constructive work to do. It would be an advantage to have a smaller number of councillors, able to do more detatiled work.
There has been slight exaggeration about the results of the Conservative local government reorganisation. Both sides of the House agreed that something must be done, and there had been many reports on local government, including the Redcliffe-Maud Report, and much pressure for change. We cannot criticise the previous Conservative Government for doing something about local government, but we can criticise the product. It is too sweeping to say that all the troubles are due to local government reorganisation. Certain parts of the reorganisation were not carried out as they should have been. There has been much false talk about this.

3.11 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Gordon Oakes): My hon. Friend the Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) has raised an important subject this afternoon, and I can congratulate him on raising it. Never before in its long history has our democratic local government system faced such difficulties and such bitter criticism, much of it unwarranted and hysterical.
The hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) was the only Opposition Member present until the entry into the Chamber a few moments ago of the hon. Member for Reading, North (Mr. Durant), and I echo what he and my hon. Friends said. In view of the wave of hysterical criticism from Opposition Benches of rates and overmanning, it is astonishing that no Conservative Member except the hon. Member for Reading, North has set foot in the Chamber during the debate.
I naturally tend to agree with much of what the hon. Member for Rochdale said about reorganisation. I had a long experience in local government, as he did, before coming to the House. I must take him up on Liverpool. He asked whether I had visited Liverpool. I have been there frequently. In fact I was born there, but I lived there only a day or two before going to Widnes. I was educated at Liverpool University.
Although the hon. Gentleman, understandably, praises the Liberals for what they have done in Liverpool, the figures show that the rate in Liverpool has been kept down not by the perfection of Liberal administration but by the receipt in 1974–75 of £48·6 million from central Government funds. For 1975–76 that figure was increased by nearly £10 million to £58·94 million, an increase of 21·1 per cent. That is what kept down the rates in Liverpool.
I feel saddened when I look around Liverpool after two years of Liberal rule. It is a city of stagnation in which decisions have not been taken. It is sad to see a great city lacking good calibre local government control, of whatever party, unable to take big decisions.
I accept, as my hon. Friend the Member for Goole said, that many people turn to their Members of Parliament for help with problems which are within the


responsibility of local authorities on which they should have gone for help to their local councillors or officers. In their turn, Members of Parliament frequently write to Ministers—especially to me—about similar problems instead of going to their local authorities with constituents' complaints. There is, it is true, a disappointing lack of knowledge about Government services in general, who is responsible for what and whether it is central Government or local government.
Ignorance, apathy and misunderstanding are bad enough, but when they are associated with prejudice and deliberate misrepresentation, the health of democratic institutions is endangered. We have had far too much criticism of local government recently. Much of that criticism has been unfair and misdirected. This afternoon I want to be somewhat unfashionable and praise local government, not blame it.
Local authorities today provide an enormously wide range of services to meet the needs of the community. Some services which used to be provided by local authorities have been transferred to other national agencies, often with not particularly spectacular results, but the range and quality of local authority work has nevertheless continued to expand. This is obvious when one considers, for example, the enormous expansion since the Second World War of education, the social services and housing, to mention but three.
Those services have expanded because the public have demanded wider and better services. Local authorities have responded to these pressures which have been exercised on them not only by their own electors but by successive Governments of both political persuasions.
There is nothing to be apologetic about. Are we to be ashamed of raising the school leaving age, of aiming to improve the welfare services, of building more houses or more roads, or of helping the chronically sick and the disabled? These are all aspects of higher living standards and, provided we can afford them, they are proper and desirable aims.
Services have to be paid for, however, and we live in a period of rising prices and rising wages. Rates have risen, and, in recent years they have risen sharply.

This has led to very hostile criticism of local government expenditure. Coupled with this was the disastrous reorganisation of local government engineered by the Conservative Party. People who had grown accustomed to and proud of their native town suddenly found that the headquarters was in another place miles away and that the new authority had been re-christened. Indeed, a popular theme song for the last Government's efforts would be "Far-away places with strange-sounding names".

Mr. Durant: Does not the Minister agree that there was pressure for local government reorganisation? As I said in my speech, we can argue about the project but we must accept that there was a demand for some change. We had the Maud Report and other Reports. Will the Minister accept that this was so?

Mr. Oakes: Of course; we set up the Maud Committee. The Committee reported, suggesting a system of local government which was totally at variance with what the Conservative Government did. They wanted at all costs to preserve the counties, even to create counties where there had been none before. I am convinced that it was a political matter. We moved amendment after amendment in the House. We suggested unitary authorities, with possibly a regional framework of government. We were in Opposition and we lost. We were, I believe, supported by hon. Members from the Liberal Benches in nearly every one of those proposals. The blame for the reorganisation cannot be put on us or on the Maud Report. It must be put squarely on the shoulders of the Conservative Party, who fiddled with the Maud Report to what they thought would be their own political advantage, although it turned out very differently in the elections after the setting up of the authorities on 1st April 1974.
My hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) both spoke of regional councils and said that if regional councils were established there should not be a third tier—or, if we include parish councils, a fourth tier, or again, if this House is included, a fifth, or, if Europe is included, a sixth tier. People would then be voting every other week. The discussion of the setting up in the fairly


distant future, as it would be, of some regional tier of government is inevitably bound up with the discussion of devolution—devolution to English regions and so on—and I hope that later in the year there will be extensive discussion about the point.
To try to reorganise local government yet again on its second birthday would be worse than doing nothing at all. It would create the greatest confusion in local government and the greatest confusion in the minds of the public, and tremendous cost would also be involved.
Therefore, I think that we should go slowly on this. We should consult widely on it. We should find out what people want. If we evolve a better system as a result, let us get it right. But let us not hurry the proposals or gerrymander them in any way in our efforts to create a structure of local government suitable to local needs in the second half of the twentieth century.
Inevitably money comes into any debate on local authorities or on local government generally. Local authorities have been hit by inflation and the demand for better services more severe than others, for a number of reason. In the first place, local authority services are labour-intensive, and wages in recent years have been rising steeply. Secondly, local authorities are responsible for massive construction works. Much of this is normally and properly paid for out of borrowing, and interest rates have risen steeply too.
We cannot hope in present circumstances to find additional money for local government in 1976–77. We have therefore had to call for a standstill in local government spending. To achieve a standstill, authorities will have to take a long, hard look at all their present policies. They will have to define their priorities rigorously and ensure that every penny is spent to best effect. Even given the maximum attention to priorities and efficiency, a standstill will still have unpalatable implications for services.
In broad terms, the outlook for 1977–78 and beyond is for a very small reduction in current expenditure for two years, with some movement in 1979–80 back to the level of expenditure planned for 1976–77. There will need to be a continuation of the sort of constraints associated with the standstill in current

expenditure already announced for 1976–77. Nevertheless, we have received the fullest co-operation from local authorities in acceptance of the need for Government policies.
At this point I should like to pay a warm tribute to the responsible attitude of the local authority associations and of individual authorities which are doing their best to meet the conflicting pressures on the one hand for restraint and on the other hand for the maintenance of services. Far from criticising them, I for one acknowledge the unselfish way in which they have responded to the Government's call for restraint to help speed our national recovery.
This applies to councils and councillors of all political persuasions, but especially to Labour councillors. I was once one, and I know that a Labour candidate goes into local politics with a burning desire to provide more and better services for his electors. That is usually his motive force in going into the work. While others may fight simply to keep the rates down or for local social prestige, his basic aim is to meet various needs, and that requires expenditure. So it is indeed a double sacrifice for Labour councils to meet their own Government's demands for severe restraint. But they have done it, and I am proud of them and so should the nation be.
Local government services are provided by people—by members and officers—and both have been the target of criticism, even abuse, during recent months. Almost all of it has been unwarranted. One target is the total manpower employed by local authorities. In round terms, and excluding the police and some other categories, local authorities in England and Wales employ a total of some 2,400,000 people. But many of these are part-time, and if the figures are adjusted to full-time and full-time equivalents then the total is just under 2 million. Of course, this figure has been growing since the war. It has been growing for the reasons I have indicated—the pressure for more and better services, backed by Government encouragement and sometimes legislation.
On this aspect, let me make three comments. First, the great bulk of local authority employees are people actually engaged on the provision of services. All big organisations need their back-up and


administrative support, but those who attack an alleged army of bureaucrats need to look at the returns of local government employment, which are now being made available on a quarterly basis through the joint staff watch operated by central and local government in co-operation. From these figures it is apparent that more than half of all local government employees are teachers, school-meals staff and other people working in schools, while two-thirds of all local government employees are accounted for in education and the social services. These are not bureaucrats. A teacher, a groundsman, a cook and a health visitor are not "bureaucrats ". They are people providing services and in daily contact with the community and helping it.
Secondly, local authority associations are fully committed to the principle that the current economic climate requires a standstill, not only in expenditure but in total manpower. Again, we have received the fullest and most responsible co-operation in this field. Thirdly, local government—both employers and employees—has staunchly observed not only the current pay policy but also the social contract which preceded it. This has been a powerful contribution to the success of our incomes policy.
Members of authorities are attacked on other grounds. On the strength of a few highly publicised and uncharacteristic instances, members are accused of drawing vast sums in allowances. We have had the allowances arrangements under review and it is a difficult matter. But the facts show that the overwhelming majority of claims are responsibly based, reasonable in amount and modest in relation to the enormous amount of time which members devote to public works.
Let me put the matter in perspective. Many councillors devote almost a full week's work to council business, especially if they are leaders or committee chairmen, regardless of their party. The maximum amount which a councillor may claim for attendance allowance is £10 per day. After tax this only amounts to £6·40p. Therefore, if he worked every day of the week he would draw only £32. How many jobs in industry or outside,

pay a working wage of less than £32? Critics of allowances should realise that many thousands of councillors are losing money—and a lot of money—by their devotion to the service of their fellow men.
My hon. Friends asked about the Government's inquiry. It is taking longer than we expected, for a number of reasons, not least that the Government's pay policy had to be taken into account. We also are considering it in conjunction with other Departments. In other words, we are considering the payment to councillors in the light of the payment to other people who serve the public. We are considering whether there should be an extension of the financial loss allowance, an increase in the attendance allowance for councillors, or some other system. We are having a wide review I hope that it will be settled soon because some people devote their lives to public service and are losing a considerable amount of money by doing so. I have come across some nasty cases where social security payments and other factors are involved in which people have been penalised very sharply for serving the public.

Mr. Cyril Smith: I hope that the Minister will not persist with his comparison a few moments ago when he asked how many workers were working for a basic wage of £32. He seemed to be comparing take-home pay with basic wages. The £32 received by councillors is after tax. Workers in industry pay tax as well.

Mr. Oakes: I agree with the hon. Member. I was referring to the take-home pay of people in positions of responsibility comparable with council chairmen. Very few of them take home less than £32 in their packet, and anyone who is devoting himself to working for the council is losing heavily by his actions.
Some newspapers, local and national, take great delight in presenting stories about local government in such a way as to imply that every councillor is corrupt and incompetent and that he is in it only for what he can get out of it. The very reverse is the truth. What the stories are really achieving is the destruction of faith in local government as a democratic institution without saying what might go in its place. A bureaucratic tangle of a prefectoral system instead—is that what they want—or dictatorial rule


from Whitehall which occurs to me to be implicit in the Tories' repeated cheap promise to abolish domestic rating without saying what would replace it other than 100 per cent. funding from the Government?
We have received the Layfield Report—an enormously bulky document—and it is with the printers now. There has been an industrial dispute at Her Majesty's Stationery Office, but we hope to produce the Report at an early date.

Mr. Durant: I appreciate that the Minister cannot give a date. However, when the Report is available will the Government provide an opportunity for it to be discussed in general, or will they react to the Report and produce a Bill? First, will there be discussion, and, following that, will there possibly be a Bill?

Mr. Oakes: We must get the Report published first. When it is published there will be extensive discussions both in this House and outside. We cannot deal with the basis of how local government is to be funded and paid for without extensive discussions. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we shall not produce a Green Paper which says nothing, a White Paper which says less and a Bill which says nothing at all. We do not intend to go about it in that way. We shall have extensive discussions both inside and outside the House.
As a nation, we are grappling with enormously difficult economic problems. We are attempting to solve those problems while maintaining our standards

of living and the vigour of our domestic democratic institutions.
In this effort we are receiving the fullest and most responsible co-operation from local government with the establishment of the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance and other joint exercises, including the staff watch, to which I have referred. I should like to pay my tribute, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North, to that Consultative Council. The local authority associations discuss in full detail with the central Government some of their problems. We likewise put before them what we have done, or what we intend to do, and our reasons for it, and they give their responses. It is all to the good of democratic institutions of government, both local and national, that consultation of that kind should take place.
It is high time to stop knocking local government. Local authorities are an essential part of our whole democratic machinery of government and they have been doing, and are now doing, a splendid job in most difficult circumstances. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment said in Manchester recently "The party is over." So be it. Let us now say that the partnership has begun.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House reaffirms its belief in the importance of local government, but recognises the need for more widespread acceptance of the principles of local democracy.

TAX THRESHOLD

3.33 p.m.

Mr. Tony Durant: I beg to move,
That this House is concerned at the financial state of single parent families, widows and the low paid, deplores the Government's procrastination over these under-privileged groups, and demands that the tax threshold should be raised to a point where cumulative benefits are not taxable and where there is, between the maximum cumulative benefits amount and the tax threshold, a space large enough to provide a sufficient incentive to take employment.
I have the good fortune, unlike many hon. Members who draw No. 3 in the Ballot, to have some time to talk about this subject. I admit that I was almost caught out. Luckily, by keeping in touch with the House, I realised what was happening and was able to be here. Otherwise, my motion might have gone by default. That would have been a great pity, because this is probably the last opportunity before the Chancellor's Budget to talk about those groups who are hardest hit by taxation. I hope that my small contribution, even at this late stage, will cause the Chancellor to have another look at the position of these people, who are facing great difficulties. I am glad that the Financial Secretary is present to listen to the debate.
I want to talk about three particular groups this afternoon. There are, first, the single-parent families. This group includes those who are divorced, and widows. These parents have extreme difficulty in managing at present.
Then we come to the widows. I want to talk particularly about widows aged between 40 and pensionable age, who are still trying to make a living and a life for themselves after a sudden bereavement.
There are, finally, the low-paid who have sometimes a part-time job and sometimes a full-time job, but a low income.
I deal first with the single parents. This group faces a number of difficulties. First, many single parents have young children. Many have to decide whether to live on social security or take a job and try to make arrangements for the children to be looked after. That is clearly a pressure upon them. If the man or the woman concerned wishes to carve out a life for himself or herself, naturally the

preference is to go out to work, but when single parents go out to work they find that the allowances that they receive are not as good as those received by a husband and wife who are both working, and they are left wth quite heavy taxation on a small income.
We have had a recent concession from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There will be some relief for single-parent families on the question of the benefit for the first child and family allowance for the first child. That will be of some help to this group. However, that is not sufficient, because these people feel that they wish to make a life for themselves and to have the opportunity of creating a family and a group, and of beginning to live a normal life once again. Most of them find that because of the pressures upon them they have to live on social security, certainly during the period when the children are very young. Life gets easier when the children go to school, but single parents are then faced with school holidays and all the other pressures involved in that situation.
I come now to the widows. This is the group on which I wish to spend most of my speech, because it is the group whose cause I have been particularly pushing, both in Questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and in a recent delegation to the Minister. I want to talk particularly about those from roughly 35–40 up to pensionable age.
Widows have a number of problems similar to those of single-parent families. They wish to carve out a life for themselves. They do not want to be dependent on the State. They want the opportunity to work. However, having overcome the initial shock of the loss of a husband, out they go to work only to find that they are, perhaps, working alongside a woman who, very often, is taking home more money than they are.
The facts of the case are quite alarming. I should like to refer to a recent submission by the National Association of Widows. The Association cites the case of a widow aged 55 on full widow's pension and paying £10 a week rent for her accommodation. A rent of £10 a week is not very great. In the case of a widow who is receiving supplementary benefit, the pension she will get will be £13·30. She gets a supplementary benefit of £8·30, and if she is doing a small


part-time job she earns, let us say, £4. That gives her a gross income of £25·60. Income tax on that sum is £1·40. That leaves her with £24·20 per week and a rent of £10, leaving her with some money in her pocket. If she goes further and decides to take a slightly better job, according to the figures that I have, she gets the same pension of £13·30. If she is then earning £20 a week—which, after all, is not the salary for a very high-powered job, although it is better than £4 a week—her gross income becomes £33·30. But her income tax then rises to £7, leaving her with a total of £26·30, which represents quite a small jump in her income, considering that the "other earnings" figure of £4 has now risen to £20. The money that she takes home is only about £2 more than what it would be if she had stayed on £4 a week.
There is something wrong with a system such as this. We must take that on board and realise that it has a psychological as well as a financial effect, because people will say "Is it worth it? Should I bother? Would it not be better to stay at home, go for more supplementary benefit, and manage? Here I am working hard, and the return is minimal."
The Chancellor of the Exchequer should look at this problem. I hope that he has already taken care of it and that my speech is a waste of time. That would satisfy me.
I have received letters from many widows about the psychological problem of not being able to earn sufficient money to make it worth while, because the tax is so high. Unlike pensioners, widows have often made no plans for widowhood. A woman is often unexpectedly left on her own, because her husband might, for example, be killed in a car crash, or suddenly be taken very ill. It is difficult to make provision for that situation, particularly because inflation has made insurance policies less attractive in recent years. One can put money into an insurance fund all one's life and find that the final sum has shrunk, through inflation. I am not making a party political point, because that has been happening ever since the war.
When we went to see the Minister we made another suggestion for tackling the problem. We submitted the idea of using the income relief for pensions scheme, so that widows would receive a certain sum

of money before taxation. The existing scheme could be extended to widows. It would be a good way of helping this group of people, and the cost would not be very high.
On 8th March I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much it would cost to extend the age allowance to widows between the ages of 40 and 65. He said that it would cost about £30 million, which is not a lot of money in terms of the national Budget. Many of the problems would disappear if the tax threshold were raised and people were able to keep more of their earnings. The Chancellor does have the problem of balancing the books. I appreciate that such a step would benefit people other than those about whom I am talking. I will shut up in a few minutes, to give the Minister an opportunity to reply.
The low-paid are another group of people who have problems. They have fairly menial jobs, and they are finding that it is better to draw social security benefits than to go to work. It is a national problem, which must be tackled, because most people want to do a job. Not many want to stay at home, although there is panic in the eyes of a very small minority when it it suggested that they find a job. The present tax system is a disincentive to work for the low-paid. If we raised the tax threshold and left more money in people's pockets, they would have an incentive to take a job and that would be more worth while for society.
The tax system needs re-examination. We are taxed too heavily. I have already told the House how, while driving on the motorway, I heard, on one of the pop radio programmes, an announcement that all the songwriters of the country, bar one, had left because of the tax system. That is not what I am here to talk about, but it is part of the problem. These people no longer keep their money, because it goes in taxation.
I believe that a shift from direct to indirect taxes would do a great deal for our society. It would encourage people to do better things with their money. I understand that it has happened in France and is part of the reason for the French success in getting their economy moving again.
I ask the Chancellor to look seriously at the question of the tax threshold and to give the low-paid, single parents and


widows an opportunity to keep more of their earnings, so that they do not feel so dependent on the State. They want to be independent, to look after their own children, to start a new life and do the things they want to do, rather than constantly worry about where the money is coming from, spending their time trying to balance the books. Society has a responsibility to be interested in the problems of such people. Lowering the tax threshold would assist them. That is why I have moved the motion.
I hope that the Minister will give us reassuring words I hope that he will say "You need not have made that speech. The matter is all taken care of. The tax threshold is about to be raised. Wait until Tuesday." I have made my speech as part of the continuing pressure on a matter about which I feel very strongly, as does the National Association of Widows.

3.47 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Robert Sheldon): The House knows the hon. Member for Reading, North (Mr. Durant) as one of the gratifyingly large number of hon. Members who are concerned about the problems of widows, among other problems. The all-party committee responsible for looking into the matter and drawing Ministers' attention to their needs has performed a valuable service.
In the Treasury we have a saying that matters are under consideration. We trot it out. It has a genuine meaning, but, perhaps because of the number of times we say it, it does not have the same impact as it would if it was heard for the first time.
As a result of the arduous efforts of the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues of mine, some of the problems have come to the fore a little more than they might have done. It is not easy to bring to the attention of Treasury Ministers wholly novel taxation matters, but we have been presented with an insight into the problems of widows, based on close research which I have been happy to see.
We all know that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer comes to prepare his Budget he receives a great many representations. Many of the representations are fairly repetitive by their very nature.

However, those representing the widows have presented some new ideas which have been under investigation. It is difficult for me to go any further than that as I am speaking within only a few days of the Budget. I came to this debate directly from a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, and I shall be returning to it.
The hon. Member for Reading, North suggests that the allowance that is given to those over 65 might be modified and brought into use for widows. That is a new suggestion. Obviously we can see that there are problems, and the hon. Gentleman recognises that they exist. The main problem is that the age allowance replaced an existing relief, whereas a suggestion of the sort that the hon. Gentleman makes would come as a completely new relief for widows. I have had responsibility for only certain aspects of assistance to widows since the main responsibility lies directly with the Department of Health and Social Security.
The hon. Gentleman said that in most cases widows were unable to make plans, and that any plans they had made were probably shattered and destroyed by the tragic loss they suffered. I accept that argument. I accept, too, the problem of making provision by means of insurance. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting the matter in the context of the distant as well as the recent past. Such provision cannot be made in any satisfactory measure owing to the level of inflation that we have suffered in recent years. Inflation produces even further problems of the sort that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
I do not think I can say very much more about that aspect of the hon. Gentleman's case other than that these are matters which the Chancellor has been considering for some time. The time of the meeting that I held with the hon. Gentleman and others was well arranged so that the information I received was fed into the discussion.
I now turn to the wider aspects of tax thresholds. The poverty trap is a direct consequence of two major factors—namely, the increase in benefits that are paid and the lowering of tax thresholds because of demands upon the tax system to raise sufficient funds to retain the public sector borrowing requirement at levels that are not grossly excessive. It


is vital that they should not become grossly excessive.
Therefore, we have had to raise levels of taxation. We have had to raise them to levels that are higher than anyone would wish. The increasing of benefits and the reduction of tax thresholds both began a long time ago, but these two factors have in recent times magnified the problems of those with incomes around the initial levels of taxation.
The hon. Gentleman rightly looks to seeing low-paid workers permitted to keep more of the income they earn. The difficulty is that assuming, as I believe, for the reasons I have described, that one needs to keep levels of tax approximately the same, the intention which the hon. Gentleman expressed so clearly can only be achieved either by reintroducing reduced rate bands, so that those coming into tax come in at a level lower than 35 per cent. plus the national insurance contribution, or by keeping the rates of tax lower than they are.
Here one faces the biggest problem of all. Reduced rate bands mean that the income forgone has to be made good by charging to tax other members of the community. That means that rates of tax would increase even further and people would come into tax at lower levels. It is easier to explain these matters on a graph, but I am sure that the hon. Member, with his understanding of the subject, will accept that when a reduced rate band is created, if the amount of tax is to be kept constant, it has to start at a lower level. That would not only create difficulties for those who would receive even less than they are paid now but would have the further

disadvantage of requiring much larger numbers of civil servants to operate the more complicated tax system that would result.
We are therefore left as a means of varying the position with the rate of tax and the threshold. As long as benefits continue to overlap, or even to approach the threshold of taxation, this means that as one starts to pay tax, so one starts to forgo benefits. Assuming that one starts to pay tax at 35 per cent. plus more than 5 per cent. for the national insurance contribution—a total rate of over 40 per cent.—and that at the same time one forgoes benefits, sometimes at a high level, one is faced with the poverty trap. The only solution is to reduce the amount of direct taxation. That is the solution that the hon. Member advanced, by implication, when he talked about the need to move more and more from direct to indirect taxation.
That suggestion obviously has its attractions. Over the past few years there has been a move under both Governments towards more direct than indirect taxation. That was not always so. In the 1960s the movement was the other way round. One of our problems in recent years, however, has been inflation, in the face of which Governments have tried to increase as little as they could the amount of indirect taxation which directly contributes to the level of inflation. That attempt was made by several Governments in the past.
One can argue that the present pay policy presents many difficulties——

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Orders of the Day — SCOTTISH BANK NOTES BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Orders of the Day — CUSTOMS DUTIES (DUMPING AND SUBSIDIES) (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine): What day? No day named.

Orders of the Day — PASSPORTS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: What day? No day named.

Orders of the Day — FREEDOM OF SPEECH (RESTORATION) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: What day? No day named.

Orders of the Day — HOMES BILL

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Second Reading [20 February].

Hon. Members: Object.

Debate further adjourned till Friday next.

Orders of the Day — ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Thomas Cox.]

Orders of the Day — SMALL FIRMS (FORM FILLING)

4.1 p.m.

Mr. John Farr: I am grateful that the Minister of State, Department

of Industry has seen fit to attend this short debate. Like him, I think that this is an important matter, the significance of which is not confined to Wilbury Engineering, of Market Harborough, as I shall seek to show. I must first say that the description given to my debate on the Order Paper, which says that I am:
to raise the subject of the burdens imposed on small firms by official form-filling (case of Wilbury Engineering) 
was not exactly what I first submitted. I had rather condensed the matter by describing it as
The case of Wilbury Engineering and over-government.
I understand that "over-government" is not, as yet, a dictionary word and the proper channels translated the description in the manner they thought fit.
I had suggested the earlier description because it depicted much more graphically what I would call the whole plethora of officialese with which companies have to struggle today.
Wilbury Engineering, of Market Harborough, is one of the many companies that are struggling with this "over-government". I would like the House to look at its case in particular. The company is a typical, small, efficient and enterprising business, of exactly the same nature as thousands of others upon whose shoulders today depends, as never before, the prosperity of our country. The success of these thousands of small businesses and firms is a measure of the success of Britain. To their success is geared the nation's prosperity.
It is absolutely essential to ensure that such companies operate in conditions that make it possible for them to compete nationally and internationally. In turn, I maintain that it is the responsibility of the Government to see that these conditions continue to exist and are not eroded. In particular, it is very much a governmental responsibility if these conditions are eroded by governmental actions. That is what is happening today to Wilbury Engineering and many others, as I shall show.
Let me take the week commencing Monday 1st March. On Saturday of that week—6th March—I held an interview session in my constituency. A representative of Wilbury Engineering came to see me and brought with him some of


the documentation which the firm had received in that week. Some documents had to be returned almost immediately, or retained for reference purposes, but I have with me about 25 official forms, booklets of advice and sheets of instructions. This is just one week's intake. They are all different, although many were sent to the firm in duplicate or triplicate.
It is right that firms should be properly acquainted with Government actions and the laws that we make in Parliament, but when this stream of new legislation and changes in old legislation affects the competitive efficiency of a firm, the matter should be brought to the attention of this House.
This is just a tiny firm, with fewer than 40 employees. It has been established for only 13 or 14 years and is not a great national concern. In one week, it received a 39-page "VAT News No. 9 ", and from the Department of Employment, a 25-page publication called "A Guide to Changes in the Contract of Employment Act 1972", an eight-page booklet called "An Outline of the Employment Protection Act", a 13-page document called "Guide to Equal Pay", an 11-page booklet called "Equal Pay—What are you doing about it?" and a 13-page document called "Personnel Records ".
From the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service, the firm received a 13-page document entitled "Job Evaluation ", a nine-page booklet entitled "An Industrial Relations Service to Industry", a six-page booklet entitled "Trade Union Recognition", and a nine-page booklet entitled "Arbitration in Trade Disputes". The largest single document for the manager to browse through was 54 pages from the Home Office entitled "Sex Discrimination". On the same day, a 25-page document called "Unfair Dismissal" was received from the Department of Employment.
During the week, the Department of Employment also sent an eight-page document on the Employment Protection Act, a seven-page booklet entitled "The Fair Wages Resolution" and a 10-page publication called "Guide to the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974".
In addition to all these documents, the firm received a total of 35 closely printed foolscap sheets from the Department of Employment containing new instructions and amendments to old instructions. A further addition to the avalanche came in the form of a circular from the Post Office, advertising a new telephone system.
That was most of one week's intake, and it totalled 283 pages of advice and instructions which need painstaking study and which no responsible firm can afford to ignore.
In the same week, lengthy official telephone calls took up more precious time of those in authority in the company, as did a two-hour visit from the local VAT inspector.
Wilbury Engineering was founded only 14 years ago and it came to Market Harborough four years ago. In that short time, by initiative, hard work and competitiveness, it secured a specialised market in power engineering. It employs about 34 persons, including three office staff simply to cope with the implementation of legislation. It is having to recruit a fourth member of the staff to the office, thereby increasing significantly its overheads and reducing its national and international competitiveness.
The case of Wilbury Engineering is typical. The top-hamper of legislation is threatening to capsize a small business. I hope that the Minister of State will at least show recognition that this problem exists for many small companies. Unless they can get some relief from this burden of paper work, having to put up their overheads in this manner will blunt their competitiveness and mean that they will be far less effective competitors at home and abroad.
I am sure that in his reply the Minister will recognise the problem, but I ask him to do more than just recognise it. Increasing its unproductive staff, which is what Wilbury Engineering is being forced to do, makes the vital difference in the competitive edge of any manufacturing or producing business. Wilbury Engineering is a typical example of an enterprising British firm, and it is in danger of going out of business unless this top-hamper of excessive legislation is dried up.

4.12 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Industry (Mr. Gerald Kaufman): In his customary calm and moderate way, the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr) has raised a problem that affects many firms throughout the country, although he related it to only one firm in his constituency. I understand that his intentions on the subject of the debate were not translated as he would have liked on to the Order Paper. I hope that he will forgive me if I extend my reply and spend a considerable amount of time dealing with the problem of form filling, because that is one aspect of the subject and it may be useful to him and to a wider audience if I provide a little information about the Government's approach to this matter within our wish to be of assistance to small firms.
I quite understand that it must be daunting to a small firm with a small staff, which it does not want to increase beyond what the business will bear, to have to cope with a great deal of literature. It would be fair to subtract from the catalogue that the hon. Gentleman produced the circular from the Post Office about a new telephone system. All businesses are circularised by the Post Office, and it may be—I do not know—that Wilbury Engineering receives other catalogues and brochures from enterprises and industry which want to do business with the company. If it had simply been private enterprise, it would still have been documentation. Therefore, I am sure that at any rate the hon. Gentleman would not feel that that was wrong. Indeed, it is commendable that the Post Office wants to go out and get more business.
I fully recognise the concern that the hon. Gentleman feels that a small firm could be flooded by literature expounding Government legislation. At the same time, one could add that a good many of the examples he gave were of legislation that is what one might call not wilful, dogmatic or extraneous, but important and useful legislation, which is to the good of many millions of our fellow citizens. Again, it is necessary that those who are involved in this legislation should be fully informed of its detail and its consequences.
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was able to ascertain whether the

283 pages that he mentioned were a typical week's example or whether there were weeks when the reading for Wilbury Engineering was lighter. Nevertheless, I do not in any way belittle what the hon. Gentleman had to say.
I have always said, in as much as I am responsible for these things, that I am against the issuing of unnecessary documentation. I am against the issuing of unnecessary forms. On the question of form filling, I assure the hon. Gentleman that whenever these matters have come to my attention in my Department, which deals particularly with industry, I have questioned persistently the need for any documentation of any kind that comes before me. I am certain that it is for the good of the country that the amount of bureaucratic inquiries should be reduced to the minimum necessary for the purposes of good government. I assure the hon. Gentleman of that.
I fully realise that this kind of documentation and form filling in particular is a matter of concern to many small firms. I assure the House, on the other hand—I know that the hon, Gentleman, who is very fair, will accept this—that the Government recognise the significant rôle that small businesses play in the country's economic life, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for having provided the House with a brief opportunity for discussing the problems confronting small firms.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will not dispute that in order to administer an advanced industrial society, with the best will in the world documentation and form filling are requirements that cannot be avoided. There is, for example, the collection of taxes—an unhappy obligation but, nevertheless, one that is necessary for the good government of the country. There is the management of our system of social security—again something that benefits many millions of people. There is the payment of Government grants or subsidies, and small firms, among others, are obviously glad of any assistance that they can rightly and satisfactorily obtain from the Government. There is the compilation of statistical information, on which so many things, including our parliamentary debates, depend. All these depend on the distribution of documentation and the completion of forms. That is not to say


that the Government are not concerned about the burden of form filling.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is Government policy to minimise the burden of documentation and of form filling which rests on firms. I attach very great importance to this. Ministers have made clear recently, in replies to a series of Questions put by the hon. Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Grant), that all forms are kept continuously under review, with a view to reducing the burden wherever possible. I shall say more about this later, if I have time.
In November 1971 the Bolton Committee of Inquiry on Small Firms reported. The Committee's terms of reference were
To consider the rôle of small firms in the national economy, the facilities available to them, and the problems confronting them; and to make recommendations.
The burden imposed on small firms by official form filling was one of the aspects considered by the Committee, and a number of recommendations were made.
These recommendations included, first, an extension of the powers of the Survey Control Unit of the Central Statistical Office to object to all statistical surveys not considered by it to be essential in character and explicitly justified; secondly, the development of a central register of businesses; thirdly, the suggestion that all Departments should review existing and proposed forms with an eye to their cost to industry and with a view to redesigning and simplifying them; fourthly, the passage of statistics between different Departments should be increased, where possible.
In an attempt to improve the situation of the 1¼ million or so small concerns contributing to the gross national product, action has been taken to implement the Bolton Committee recommendations as rapidly as possible, and most of them have been partially or fully implemented.
Let me first describe the work of the Government's Survey Control Unit in the Central Statistical Office. In 1974, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister renewed a directive to Departments made by his predecessor in March 1972, asking them to improve arrangements for the scrutiny of all statistical surveys. Departments are required to report as early as

possible to the Survey Control Unit all proposals for new surveys and significant changes to existing surveys. It is the job of the Survey Control Unit to look critically at these proposals, to eliminate unnecessary duplication and to ensure that the value of the purposes served by each survey justifies its cost both to industry and to Government.
Before any new statistical survey is undertaken by my Department, representatives of industry and potential users are always consulted. No new survey is carried out without the "go ahead" from a Minister. Only recently, when one was brought to me, I inquired into it very thoroughly before consenting to it.
I turn next to the central register and the question of the passage of information between Departments. An encouraging development towards easing the burden of form filling was Section 55 of the 1973 Finance Act. This has enabled certain information about individual businesses obtained from value added tax records—namely, name and address of the business, its industrial classification, turnover and status—to be passed by Customs and Excise to the Business Statistics Office (BSO) for statistical purposes. The information is held on magnetic tape and is passed at negligible cost. Until this information became available, the BSO was not able to obtain an indication of the size of a firm in terms of its turnover or its industry classification without first having to send it a form to fill in. This can now be avoided. The VAT information is now being used by the Business Statistics Office to employ sampling methods in its inquiries to a much greater extent than was possible in the past.
For example, the BSO addressed an inquiry to a sample of 28,000 wholesalers in respect of their businesses in 1974, and some 50,000 businesses were exempt from the inquiry. These would otherwise have been required to complete forms. A sample inquiry into retailing for 1976 will go to not more than 30,000 businesses out of a total of some 350,000. Smaller retailers in the sample with a turnover of less than £50,000 will be asked to complete only a simplified form.
So far as we can judge, statistical forms account for only a small proportion of the total number of forms sent out by Government—possibly fewer than


one in five. Of these, the great majority are directed to the medium-size and larger firms. In order to reduce the burden of form filling on small firms, the forms sent to them generally contain fewer questions and are simpler and easier to complete than those sent to the larger ones.
Returns made by businesses are continuously reviewed, with a view to simplifying them and making sure that they are not sent unnecessarily to smaller firms. Recently, for example, my Department completed an extensive review of the quarterly sales inquiries directed to manufacturing industry. As a result, the exemption limit for 20 out of 165 manufacturing industries has been raised from the normal level of 25 employees to a level of 50 employees. There will, of course, be some marginal deterioration in the quality of the statistics in consequence, but this must be set against the advantage that 1,000 establishments which previously received questionnaires each quarter will no longer do so. In fact, there are some 80,000 manufacturing establishments with fewer than 25 employees now exempt from completing the quarterly and monthly returns sent out by the BSO—

Mr. Farr: The Minister is dealing effectively with the form-filling side of the argument. I am glad to learn that his Department is aware of the burdens which an excess of form filling can impose on industry. Will he promise before he concludes that he will look into the possibility, instead of issuing, for example, in one week in March 11 pamphlets from the Department of Employment and another six from the advisory service, of providing perhaps a monthly consolidated issue to all employers who are affected? In that way, instead of pieces of paper pouring in through the post every day, they can obtain the information in a much more readily available form which can be referred to much more easily.

Mr. Kaufman: I am replying in my capacity as a Minister at the Department of Industry dealing with my own departmental responsibilities. I shall be very happy to pass on to my colleagues in the Department of Employment the hon. Member's specific suggestion. What

is more, I shall see that it is passed on to any other Departments which have responsibility for distributing documents in this way to businesses, particularly to small businesses.
It is not possible for me to comment on the practicability of the hon. Gentleman's proposal, but I assure him that it will be passed on and that I shall request that a specific reply goes from the Department of Employment to him.
I was dealing with the question of form filling before the hon. Member intervened. Here again I think I can be of assistance. There are about 29,000 manufacturing establishments with 25 or more employees which receive the questionnaires to which I was referring. In the Annual Census of Production from 1973 onwards, the exemption limit was reduced from 25 to 20 employees to satisfy the requirements of the European Economic Community, but only a short simplified census form goes to firms employing fewer than 100.
The BSO makes every effort to ensure that the questions it asks are as far as possible of a kind which can be answered from the records which businesses normally keep. On such matters it consults not only its statutory advisory committees but members of the accounting bodies, national organisations like the CBI, and trade associations. The BSO is aware, too, that a standard form which applies to all the firms in an industry can look very formidable indeed, with sometimes 100 or more questions on it, although perhaps only half a dozen of them apply to the average business. The BSO is therefore studying the feasibility of using its computer to generate a special form for each contributor to its quarterly sales inquiries which will list only the products that the contributor is known to make. A pilot scheme covering three industries is now under way.
I acknowledge that the Government are responsible for collecting a very wide range of statistical information from industry and trade. This information is required if economic developments are to be monitored and if sound policy decisions are to be made. The statistics provide the basis for the monthly Index of Industrial Production; the quarterly National Income Accounts and Balance of Payments Statistics; Indices of Wholesale Prices; statistics of sales and orders;


statistics of capital expenditure, investment intentions, and stocks, and so on.
The Government Statistical Service cannot magic or invent these statistics; they have to be based on information supplied from the business community itself. The great majority of firms appreciate this and recognise the necessity for providing the information and co-operate well. I should like to record the Government's appreciation to these firms for their co-operation.
Accounting accuracy is not required in most of the statistics collected by Government, but the Business Statistics Office imposes checks on the information it receives and these checks identify gross inaccuracies, which can, if necessary, be investigated with the firms concerned. If firms experience special difficulties in providing information required, my statis

ticians are always willing to discuss the problems with them.
The hon. Gentleman can rest assured that the Government are deeply conscious of the need to minimise the burden of form filling on smaller firms, that these matters are kept under constant review by the Government and their Statistical Service, and that the Government take full account of the kind of considerations that he has referred to in his useful and helpful speech. I shall ensure that the points he has raised which are not specifically relevant to my Department will be pursued with other Departments. I shall try to get him answers to the questions he has raised which I am not competent to answer. I thank him again for raising this subject

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes to Five o'clock.